Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life

By William R. Leach

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679758658
• ISBN13: 9780679758655
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Interesting

Country of Exiles is a fascinating book, though I'm not sure Leach's arguments add up. He identifies and analyzes certain aspects of our society, but I'm not sure these aspects are central to the rootlessness that is undeniably a central tenet of our modern-day living. Tourism and casinos as the cause of this shiftless life? I don't think so.....but his notes and observations on both of these is informative and fascinating. (I particularly liked his endnotes--half as long as the text, citing every single source; very reassuring.) I want to be critical of this book, but I recognize that there's something there in what he's written. I just finished reading it, and already I want to skim through it again and reread certain passages--which means that this is one book that provokes one into thinking, which can't be all bad.

Capitalists create the context within which Americans wander

According to Leach, corporations, academia and government have all worked to disengage Americans from their places of nurture so that Americans and indeed the whole world will travel, consume, and search continually for new things and experiences to buy. Upon reflection, I ask myself how Professor Leach convinced me that one-size-fits-all containers (for trains and trucks) supports his thesis.