Ebook The Absent Hand Reimagining Our American Landscape edition by Suzannah Lessard Politics Social Sciences eBooks

Product details File Size 1024 KB Print Length 317 pages Page Numbers Source ISBN 1640092218 Publisher Counterpoint (March 12, 2019) Publication Date March 12, 2019 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B07H86XWST

The Absent Hand Reimagining Our American Landscape edition by Suzannah Lessard Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews

• It is so difficult these days to find books that don’t drag partisan politics into whatever they are supposed to be about, to just get away from that endless war. Based on a favorable Wall Street Journal review, I gave the book a try. The sample held up to the review - luminous writing and a deep understanding of place. So I bought it. Things changed rapidly from appreciation of American spaces to political screed. Suddenly we’ve transitioned from moving descriptions of natural and human scenes to the alleged sins of “conservative legislators.” Then we are hearing that only two alleged examples of American exceptionalism have held up - our “foundation in slavery” and “that we introduced the far extreme of modern weaponry to the world.” There is acknowledgment of our achievements in space, not as exceptionalism, but rather in support of the theory that Apollo 8’s photos of Earth had so destroyed the idea of religion and patriotism that the government put an end to space exploration to preserve them. Presumably, those conservative legislators at work again. It goes on in this vein. The author visits various places and, after reading old newspapers and talking to people as preparation, drops in as from the sky to identify America’s sins and failures in them. The landscapes are relentlessly political, the judgments freely dispensed. Slavery and the atomic bomb cast shadows everywhere. The descriptive writing - how places look and feel - is first rate. The prescriptive writing - political and ideological judgments - is tiresome. There is far too much slogging through the latter needed to get to the former. How very very sad it must be to live in a nation that disappoints you so thoroughly and to so misapprehend its soul, its worth, its exceptional qualities.