Join us for Lit Youngstown's Food for Thought book discussion, sponsored by the Raymond J. Wean Foundation. We meet each month Sept.-May, at 5:30pm on the 2nd Thursday at Noble Creature, 126 E. Rayen. Haven't read the book yet? No worries.
The March title is Bad Land by Jonathan Raban. This book is available at the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County, and POP Arts, Book, Culture via Bookshop.
"In 1909 maps still identified eastern Montana as the Great American Desert. But in that year Congress, lobbied heavily by railroad companies, offered 320-acre tracts of land to anyone bold or foolish enough to stake a claim to them. Drawn by shamelessly inventive brochures, countless homesteaders—many of them immigrants—went west to make their fortunes. Most failed. In Bad Land, Jonathan Raban travels through the unforgiving country that was the scene of their dreams and undoing, and makes their story come miraculously alive.
In towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its name to Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in the landscape in between, Raban unearths a vanished episode of American history, with its own ruins, its own heroes and heroines, its own hopeful myths and bitter memories."
Upcoming titles:
April (poetry) West: a Translation by Paisley Rekdal
May (travel writing) Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horowitz