Country of Exiles - by William R Leach (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Country of Exiles, William Leach, whose Land of Desire was a finalist for the National Book Award, explores the troubling effects of our national love affair with mobility. He shows us how the impulse to pull up stakes and find a new frontier has always battled with the need to put down roots, and how a new cosmopolitanism has seized our national identity.

Leach takes us across a featureless America, where strip malls homogenize a once varied and majestic landscape, and where casinos displace the Native American spiritual connection to the land. He shows us a culture where everyone, from CEOs to office temps, abandons the notion of company loyalty, and where rootless academics posit a world without borders. With compelling vision and insight, Leach reveals the profound but often hidden impact of America's disintegrating sense of place on our national and individual psyche.

Review Quotes

"Brilliant. . . . Leach [is] one of the most creative and critical historians of
American culture and social history." --The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Thoughtful, well-written, well-argued." --Choice

"Quite persuasive." --Times Literary Supplement

"A forcefully argued, gracefully written requiem for our country's vanishing attachment to specific places." --Salon

"[Leach's] analysis is eye-opening. . . . Perhaps the most searching and thoughtful examination of the specific causes that may underlie the current prevalence of incivility." --The Christian Science Monitor