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Ian Frazier

Great Plains Paperback – May 4, 2001

by Ian Frazier (Author)

224 ratings

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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

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Picador
Publication date

May 4, 2001
Dimensions

5.58 x 0.83 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0312278500
ISBN-13

978-0312278502
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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

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.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; 1st edition (May 4, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312278500
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312278502
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.58 x 0.83 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #276,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #95 in Central United States Travel Guides
- #187 in General Western US Travel Guides
- #249 in Midwest US Travel Guides (Books)

Customer Reviews:
224 ratings

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Ian Frazier
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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.
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Customer reviews

5 star		63%
4 star		22%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Roger Kruger

The eye of a tourist

Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2018

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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.

20 people found this helpful

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On the ground in fly-over country

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2018

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“The Plains Cree never washed their clothes, just bought new ones at the trader’s twice a year … The Crow chopped joints off their fingers in mourning so often that they hardly had a whole hand among them. The men generally saved their thumbs and one or two trigger fingers.” ‒ from GREAT PLAINS

“The empty air was still vibrating slightly with the suppressed fidgets of children.” ‒ from GREAT PLAINS, Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic in Strasburg, ND after the end of Sunday service

“… the oil towns of Plainview and Midland and Odessa rise like offshore drilling rigs. In prosperous years, the push buttons of local pay telephones are smudged with oily fingerprints, and Laundromats have ‘Do Not Wash Rig Clothes Here’ signs.” ‒ from GREAT PLAINS

“‘(Custer) killed a man when he fell. He laughed’, Sitting Bull said … I like to believe Custer even had fun dying … Custer finally ran into the largest off-reservation gathering of Indians ever in one place on the continent, and gave them what was possibly the last really good time they ever had.” ‒ from GREAT PLAINS

“Driving on the prairie near Great Falls, Montana, or Minot, North Dakota, or Cheyenne, Wyoming, you might not realize right away that you are in a weapons system. A nuclear-missile silo is one of the quintessential Great Plains objects: to the eye, it is almost nothing … but to the imagination, it is the end of the world.” ‒ from GREAT PLAINS

In 1982, author Ian Frazier moved from New York to Kalispell, Montana. There, he started to dream about the Great Plains. And from there, he began his exploration of the landscape he dreamed about. In GREAT PLAINS, he tells us what he discovered.

Although there may be an underlying structure to GREAT PLAINS, it wasn’t readily apparent to this reader beyond the chapter numbers. Rather it seems but an almost endless stream-of-thought collection of anecdotal stories of Frazier’s personal experiences driving the Great Plains mixed with historical asides about the region. It is, however, constantly fascinating. It was a disappointment when the narrative concluded at the 69% point when the book transitioned to the Notes Index; unhappily, the narrative itself isn’t endless.

Beyond his own experiences with the people he meets and the places he visits, GREAT PLAINS is a varied mix of Great Plains past history and present realities: the identifying characteristics of the Indian tribes and their tepees, the old trapper rendezvous sites of Fort Union and Bent’s Fort, the plains grasses and tumbleweeds, Bonnie and Clyde, Billie the Kid, present-day abandoned homesteads, Custer, the Dustbowl, the influx of black settlers after the Civil War and that of German-speaking Russians in the late 19th century, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the evolution of wheat types being planted and stored, present-day missile silos, strip mining, the 1862 Homestead Act, Lawrence Welk, the extermination of the buffalo, cattle drives, Dodge City of the “old west”, and the Indian Ghost Dance. The topics touched upon by Frazier are contextually fascinating and, thus, GREAT PLAINS is one of those books which compel the reader to Google search for more information.

I enjoyed GREAT PLAINS more than I thought I would. When I fly over them next, I’ll pay more attention looking out the window.

11 people found this helpful

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JuicesFlowing

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

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2021

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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.

Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2013

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This is a marvelous book, one of my favorites. If it has special meaning for me, it is because I grew up on those plains, where a man on a horse could ride through grasses so tall he could pass unseen. Some 50 years ago when I was a child, those prairies were neat lawns, shaven down to emerald squares topped by demure ranch houses on streets with names like Olathe Drive or Sioux Circle. Ian Frazier, in his epic work, "Great Plains," looks back to America's heart's past and sees again the vast herds of bison, the rutted trails West, the harsh light and harsher weather. His prose sings and dances with stories of people, red, white, black and yellow, who lived and bled on those plains under an endless blue sky, across an enormous landscape of golden plant life teeming with animals. That horizon ended only with the faintest smudge of gray, where the Rocky Mountains began. I knew only glimpses of my home place, living in Manhattan, where the flat, featureless streets bear no resemblance to the supposedly flat, featureless prairies. Then I read, for the first of many times, Frazier's paean to the Great Plains, and I knew I had found my way home.

15 people found this helpful

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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

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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.

Brr

Great book

Reviewed in Italy on November 9, 2018

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