Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier

Hampton Sides is an excellent writer and story teller. He also is very good with widely divergent topics as witnessed by his excellent "Ghost Soldiers" and "Blood and Thunder". In this book, "Americana", Sides the magazine reporter offers a compelling collection of stories that display some of the wide and ranging interests that define America in our day. The reader will ride the Iditarod Trail and skateboards in two of the essays - the first exploring a celebration of the last frontier in America and the latter the phenomenon of Tony Hawk. Readers will also explore the national spelling bee, the earth travelers who inhabited Biosphere (remember that?), Pentecostal worshipers and more somber topics like 9-11 survivors and a Marine hero killed in Iraq. Bass fishing, a secret conclave of powerful men who meet in the woods and the Sturgis Harley-Davidson meet up are delved into along with numerous other pictures of "Americana." Although this book is unlike Ghost Soldiers or Blood and Thunder in that it is a collection of discreet portraits and not a single story, the essays are fascinating and Sides handles them well. Some of those covered will strike readers as "off their rockers" but the author never belittles nor humiliates those who people his writings. He just tells well-crafted stories and gives the characters time and space to reveal their passion and interest in the topic at hand. Sides is an excellent storyteller and anyone interested in delving into some of the edges of this nation will appreciate his collection.

Mr. Sides never disappoints. This is an interesting collection of stories about people I would not otherwise have known about. As always, he brings characters to life with vivid prose, he chooses subjects that are fascinating and he doesn't indulge in hyperbole, allowing the story to take shape naturally and seems to take care not to pontificate or push his personal agenda. I'm almost done with his catalog, Kingdom of Ice is next, don't know what I'll do when I'm done; wish he could write as fast as I read.

I 've enjoyed each of Hampton Sides books that I've read and Americana was no exception. Sides has a very readable style. Intelligent and full of insight. This book is one of his earliest but I'm only now reading it. I recommend this book and any of his writings.

Sides is a great writer and most of his stories are a wealth of information on topics we thought we knew but apparently didn't, you learn a lot from reading his stories. That said, a couple of his stories were rather upsetting to me. The story on Santa Fe, New Mexico, which he calls a "fake" place, is obviously written with an "eastern" states mentality, and although he even claims S.F. as his home now, I don't know why, for he doesn't GET the southwest, the freedom, the spaces, the people, and yes, especially the building codes that conform to the beauty of nature. He doesn't get any of it. Also, as he moved there in 1994, Santa Fe was already partly ruined by the mass exodus of Californians taking their big California money and taking over the southwest plus the states of Oregon and Washington. I know, I lived in northern Arizona when the Californians moved in to take the town over, much like New Yorkers do in South Florida. So I don't know why he has chosen to make this FAKE town his home.

As a newspaper columnist and trained social psychologist who loved "In The Kingdom of Ice" and "Ghost Soldiers," also by Mr. Sides, I came to "Americana" with high expectations... although of exactly what I wasn't sure. It turns out that the author can not only devote years of research into stunning episodes in American history but also descriptively nip away at the underbelly of American society. With equal respect for our country's heroes (e.g., "First" which provides a brilliant portrait of the first U.S. combat casualty during the second Iraq war), yahoos (e.g., "Smells Like Zippy Spirit," "Sisters of the Bowl") and just plain colorful characters (virtually all the remaining stories), Sides manages to combine great writing with sharp reporting and a wry sense of humor. This is the real America we love, not necessarily the more two-dimensional one featured on the evening news or the one described by such perfectly capable correspondents as Charles Kouralt. I doubt that anyone will enjoy each of these 30 essays equally, but no doubt everyone will have several favorite pieces that will stick with them and perhaps call out for a second or third read. Few writers could have ever pulled off a collection quite like "Americana."

I really enjoy Sides' work and while this book is somewhat uneven considering the myriad vignettes it covers, Sides' strong prose and the Tony Hawk story alone are worth the price.

I find the writer's style to be wonderful. The short stories in this book are based on first hand experience. One of the stories I read in this book was about his experience with "Mormon archaeology." Mr. Sides details his meetings with many Mormon researchers at BYU and at FARMs and I find his experiences to be highly similar to mine when I lived in Utah. (You readers out there, you have to read Mr. Sides "In the Kingdom of Ice.")

Not as appealing to me as his other books, but I enjoyed many of the chapters. I couldn't relate to some of the people he covered. Generation gap, I assume.

I’m a big fan of Hampton Sides and have read all his books. Americana is different from his longer narrative histories, but equally good in its own way. This collection brings together articles and essays written for magazines over the last 3–4 decades, covering a wide range of topics and characters from across America. The variety is part of its charm – Sides has a gift for finding the extraordinary in unexpected places and making each story compelling. It’s the perfect book for holiday reading: you can dip in and out, savoring one piece at a time, or read it straight through and enjoy the sweep of voices and places.

Problems with this purchase...35 pages were miissing from book.... I would like a "compete" book resent... What a pain!