Buying Options

Print List Price:	$20.00
Kindle Price:	$12.99 Save $7.01 (35%)
Sold by:	Macmillan Price set by seller.

Promotions apply when you purchase

Deliver to your Kindle Library

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the Author

Ian Frazier

Great Plains Kindle Edition

by Ian Frazier (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

270 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$12.99

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$25.00

$1.59

Paperback

"Please retry"

$20.00

$12.95

$1.90

Kindle
$12.99 Read with Our Free App
Hardcover
$25.00

49 Used from $1.59 2 New from $25.00 11 Collectible from $15.00
Paperback
$20.00

53 Used from $1.90 14 New from $12.95

National Bestseller

Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation.

With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

Print length

199 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date

May 4, 2001
File size

3435 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Ian Frazier
169
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
Ian Frazier
261
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
Ian Frazier
39
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
Jonathan Raban
214
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.99
Ian Frazier
59
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
Bruce Chatwin
804
Kindle Edition
in History of Chile
1 offer from $13.99

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Extraordinary...One thinks of such American originals as John McPhee, Wallace Stegner, Edward Hoagland, Peter Matthiessen, and Evan S. Connell.” ―The Washington Post Book

“This is a brillant, funny, and altogether perfect book, soaked in research and then aired out on the open plains to evaporate the excess, leaving this modern masterpiece. It makes me want to get in a truck and drive straight out to North Dakota and look at the prairie.” ―Garrison Keillor

“History written with passion and delight... Frazier is a great storyteller.” ―Newsweek

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Ian Frazier is the author of Travels in Siberia, Great Plains, On the Rez, Lamentations of the Father and Coyote V. Acme, among other works, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He graduated from Harvard University. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009LRWVBY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (May 4, 2001)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 4, 2001
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3435 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 199 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #319,906 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8 in Central U.S. Regional Travel
- #16 in Midwest US Travel Guides (Kindle Store)
- #341 in Travel Writing

Customer Reviews:
270 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Ian Frazier

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Ian Frazier is the author of Great Plains, The Fish's Eye, On the Rez, and Family, as well as Coyote v. Acme and Dating Your Mom, all published by FSG. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

270 global ratings

5 star		63%
4 star		20%
3 star		11%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Matt F

quirky but well written

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 29, 2022

Verified Purchase

I don’t know what I expected when I bought a book called “Great Plains” but I didn’t expect what I got. Frazier weaves together mostly interesting personal stories about his travels through the plains area with some historical context. Ultimately this is good writing and is entertaining but it’s not much more than that.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 13, 2022

Verified Purchase

Looking forward to reading this well recommended but hard to find book.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

Ian Frazier describes the Great Plains as a tourist might visiting a foreign country, charmed by its “otherness, romanticizing its strangeness. I’ve spent most of my life on or near the Great Plains. Most of the places he writes about are familiar. I must admit, though, that I have driven past many of the museums he stopped to visit, as I assumed they were at best vain attempts to claim that there was something significant or interesting about a mostly boring and unremarkable landscape. I still find other parts of the country to be far more beautiful and filled with many more things of interest, but the vast open spaces of the prairie still tug at my heart as no other place can. Thus, I found his book to be especially interesting as it has enabled me to see the familiar through the eyes of a stranger. I learned much that was new to me (including what was in the museums I have always driven by), and his writing, is captivating.
One quibble: I found it strange that he almost completely overlooks the significance of the railroads to the Great Plains other than a passing remark about coal trains. Long before the development of air travel which made this “flyover country” railroads were an integral part of the development of this area, often determining which settlements succeeded and which failed. Many of the towns of the Great Plains still have a railway station, even if it is no longer in use. And, while only a smattering of passengers still travel my rail across these states, the railways still carry a vast amount of freight. It was strange, in fact, the he made no mention of the Union Pacific Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, the largest rail yard in the world, through which an average of 139 trains per day pass through.

25 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kenneth Feneley

Powerful Story!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

Ian Frazier's "Great Plains" became an increasingly compelling and informing read for me. His chapter summaries are stuff that should required reading for anybody hoping to sensibly discuss the history we white people have imposed on this land.

Helpful

JuicesFlowing

Absorbing and interesting. Didn’t want it to end.!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 1, 2021

Verified Purchase

I was born and raised on the Great Plains, and have come to love the very region this book is about. I also love the history. Frazier explores this in interesting and great detail. I was never bored while reading this. It’s not a dry, history essay of the Plains. It’s a road trip travelogue full of historical research, but it’s also something else. Frazier does an amazing job of bringing in the people of the plains that he meets. This book made me want to get in my car and drive everywhere he went. It’s gritty, rugged, and spacious. Not boring, these Great Plains. I guess it depends who you are and where you’re from, but I really, really appreciated Ian Frazier’s writing in this book.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Josephine Briggs

great plains

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 27, 2009

Verified Purchase

I liked this book very much. It is complicated, interesting, informative and a good study of the 10 plains state and which part of them contains the actual plains. The book is like a large tapestry with many different elements woven in. There is the geography of the land, the plants, animals, people plus much more. This is also a book of joie d' vivre, love of life, a French impressionist painting of the beauty and joy of being alive,the joy of small incidental occurances too easily forgotten. Ian Frazier also uses stream of conscience as different scenes, places and people flash before his eyes. He then goes back in history to the lifestyle of the Indians before the white men came to the plains and how when they did come how riciculous the red men thought the white mens ways and customs were. Then he comes back to today and what is happening now. So, back and forth, back and forth from history to present. Mr Frazier tells of how the plains were becoming settled and civilized and of the colorful characters who lived and helped shape this area into what it would become. Crazy Horse was a favorite and he also liked George Custer and believed Custer also loved this wide open land, some parts rolling, some like a rumpled bed and other areas as flat as a board which makes heaven and earth seem to come together. I believe Mr Frazier loves this wide open country because he spent two years living here and writing about it and driving back and forth crossing much. But he writes back and forth from past history to present. But the book ends concerning future times and is concerned with nuclear missal sites. Tomorrow land

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Badazz

A Great Story-as Vast as the Plains

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 25, 2013

Verified Purchase

The Great Plains, by Ian Frazier is a top notch, travelogue and cultural study. Why exactly should a discriminating reader buy or read a book which describes a part of the country that so many Americans either fly over, or try and get through as fast as possible? In short, Frazier's description of this region of America is worth reading if only for his outstanding use of the English Language. Additionally, the Great Plains is as storied and as colorful a region of the United States as any other.

The book was written in the late 1980s, when President Reagan was busy building up the military and aggressively confronting the Soviet Union. In that conflict, the Great Plains played a central part-namely it was, and remains, the area which the United States Air Force stores its Nuclear Missiles, and houses its fleets of bombers. It was the home turf of Strategic Air Command. Frazier looks at the situation full in the face, he genuinely is concerned about the fate of the world with so many warheads hidden under the sea of grass. Remarking on events current to the books publishing adds to the work, it gives an all important layer of time to the place described.

This book is a delight to read, for those whose roots sink into the region as well as people on the coasts who become curious about what they are flying over. A vast, rich, and fertile story.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

F. J. Court

Bill Bryson on speed!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 24, 2012

Verified Purchase

Good reportage, probably not in depth enough and a bit fractured in places as his journey does not follow an established pattern. Not laugh out loud, but found myself smiling quite a lot. Unbiased about the native Indian which a lot of US books are not, they seem to thrive on matter of fact racism.
It is a quick read, and gives a good insight into US culture of cars, driving and their paranoia in the cold war.

One person found this helpful

Roger Taylor

Dull.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

A really boring book which failed to live up to the New Yorker review. Gave myself a medal fo finishing it! Could have been so much more interesting.

BtotheS

Great book

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on November 9, 2018

Verified Purchase