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A searing, on-the-ground examination of the collapsing coal industry - and the communities left behind - in the midst of an economic and environmental crisis. The past few years have highlighted the paradox at the heart of coal country. Despite fueling a century of American progress, the people at the heart of coal country are being left behind, suffering from unemployment, the opioid epidemic, and environmental crises often at greater rates than anywhere else in the country. But what if Appalachia’s troubles are just a taste of what the future holds for all of us?

Royal, Nebraska, population eighty-one - where the church, high school, and post office each stand abandoned, monuments to a Great Plains town that never flourished. But for nearly twenty years, they had a zoo, seven acres that rose from local peculiarity to key tourist attraction to devastating tragedy. And it all began with one man’s outsize vision. When Dick Haskin’s plans to assist primatologist Dian Fossey in Rwanda were cut short by her murder, Dick’s devotion to primates didn’t die with her. He returned to his hometown with Reuben, an adolescent chimp.

Like so many American factory towns, Lewiston, Maine, thrived until its mill jobs disappeared and the young began leaving. But then the story unexpectedly veered: over the course of fifteen years, the city became home to thousands of African immigrants and, along the way, turned into one of the most Muslim towns in the US. Now about 6,000 of Lewiston's 36,000 inhabitants are refugees and asylum seekers, many of them Somali. Cynthia Anderson tells the story of this fractious yet resilient city.

When writer Simon Barnes heard a Cetti's warbler sing out as he turned up to look at a house for sale, he knew immediately that he had found his new home. The fact that his garden backed onto an area of marshy land only increased the possibilities, but there was always the fear that it might end up in the wrong hands and be lost to development or intensive farming.

The hilarious, charming, and candid story of writer Christopher Ingraham’s decision to uproot his life and move his family to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, population 1,400 - the community he made famous as “the worst place to live in America” in a story he wrote for the Washington Post.

Die stolze bäuerliche Landwirtschaft mit Viehmärkten, Selbstversorgung und harter Knochenarbeit ist im Laufe der Sechzigerjahre in rasantem Tempo und doch ganz leise verschwunden. Ewald Frie erzählt am Beispiel seiner Familie von der großen Zäsur. Mit wenigen Strichen, anhand von vielsagenden Szenen und Beispielen zeigt er, wie die Welt der Eltern unterging, die Geschwister anderen Lebensentwürfen folgten und der allgemeine gesellschaftliche Wandel das Land erfasste.

In Great Leaps, Colin Flahive explores China's rural-urban migration against the backdrop of his own transition from Colorado to southwest China. There he partnered with three friends to open a café that became much more than simply an outpost of Western cuisine in a far-flung corner of the world. Over the course of a decade, Salvador's Coffee House became home to more than 50 young women from mountain villages in the surrounding countryside. Most knew nothing about coffee or Western food, but they moved to the city to work at Salvador's and earn their independence.

A Sometimes Paradise is a moving personal journey into the rugged beauty and hardscrabble challenges of Wyoming ranch life that shaped Mark Miller as a boy and then as a young man. Against the backdrop of deadly ice storms and punishing droughts in a harsh, unforgiving environment, Mark shares stories of adventures, misadventures, and invaluable lessons he learned along the way. As he adapted to the rugged Wyoming terrain, he forged an unbreakable connection with the land and animals—and discovered the true power of family and friendship.

In January 2023 the largest land access demonstration since the 1930s took place on a bright wintery morning on Dartmoor. Those who spearheaded the protest want open access to every acre of rural Britain. They claim that access helps nature by allowing the public to hold landowners and farmers to account and they claim it will have no effect on wildlife. But where does the truth actually lie? Is access to the countryside quite as restricted as we are led to believe and are all of those farmers, conservationists and landowners who worry about public access simply misguided?

Der vorliegende Text setzt sich mit dem Thema Individualität in Groß- bzw. Kleinstädten und ländlichen Gegenden und damit mit den unterschiedlichen Wahrnehmungen dieses womöglich unterschiedlichen Menschenschlags auseinander. Keiner wundert sich in Berlin-Wedding über 14jährige, die ihre Babywagen durch die Gegend schieben, während in ländlichen Gegenden bereits ein unverheirateter 30jähriger Mann zum Gesprächsstoff der Nachbarn wird.

Its Faulkner meets Foxworthy! Jay McBride's portrayal of the hilarious antics and schemes of those surviving in the underbelly of southern culture not only ring true, but also reveal deep respect for a survival tool that transcends everything material: an active and ongoing sense of humor.

Il libro che ha rivelato al mondo l'anima profonda dell'America. I nonni di J.D. sono sporchi, poveri e innamorati quando emigrano giovanissimi dalle regioni dei monti Appalachi verso l’Ohio nella speranza di una vita migliore. Ma quel sogno di benessere e riscatto è solo sfiorato, perché prima di diventare uomo il loro nipote lotterà a lungo con la miseria e la violenza domestica: una madre tossicodipendente, patrigni nullafacenti che si susseguono uno dopo l’altro, vicini di casa alcolisti capaci solamente di sopravvivere con i sussidi e lamentarsi del governo.

In the 1990s a small midwestern American town approved the construction of a massive pork complex, where almost 7 million hogs are birthed, raised, and killed every year. In Porkopolis Alex Blanchette explores how this rural community has been reorganized around the life and death cycles of corporate pigs. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork, Blanchette immerses listeners into the workplaces that underlie modern meat, from slaughterhouses and corporate offices to artificial insemination barns and bone-rendering facilities.

Sense pràcticament adonar-nos-en, vam desconnectar de la vida rural amb l'assumpció de no tornar-hi més. Amb el temps, ens hem obstinat a generar un debat que ha confrontat la ruralitat i la urbanitat en uns termes molt simplistes: hem associat el camp i les muntanyes a unes pràctiques antigues marcades per la precarietat i l'aïllament, i les ciutats a la modernitat, al benestar i a la comoditat, que ha exterminat, però tot allò que ha considerat antic, inservible, lent i caduc.

Con el formidable éxito de ventas de Entre limones -el divertidísimo relato autobiográfico de un joven inglés que, con tal de no vestir traje y acudir a una oficina, se gasta todos sus ahorros en la compra de un ruinoso cortijo en la Alpujarra granadina- Chris Stewart dio comienzoa su célebre trilogía sobre el irresistible encanto de la vida alternativa, en la que los pequeños sucesos cotidianos y la tranquila observación del espectáculo que supone la actitud del hombre ante sus semejantes y ante la naturaleza compensan con creces los placeres materiales de una vida normal.

La extrema derecha española empezó a parecerse un poco más a la europea cuando murió el dictador Francisco Franco. La transición estuvo marcada por la violencia de los grupos parapoliciales y el terrorismo de Estado, pero pronto llegaron las bandas de skinheads neonazis, los ultras del fútbol, y poco a poco, las nuevas formaciones de ultraderecha y los movimientos sociales neofascistas.

The suburbs have become too liberal and diverse for many white American conservatives, so "exurbia"—areas outside the cities and their suburbs—are becoming the staging ground for the radical right extremist insurgency . . .

Before it made global headlines as the small town that burned down during a record-breaking heat wave in June 2021, while briefly the hottest place on Earth, Lytton, British Columbia, had a curious past. Named for the author of the infamous line, “It was a dark and stormy night,” Lytton was also where Peter Edwards, organized-crime journalist and author spent his childhood. Although only about 500 people lived in Lytton, Peter liked to joke that he was only the second-best writer to come from his tiny hometown.

This pathbreaking book pinpoints forces behind the rise of the "rural voter"—a new political identity that combines a deeply felt sense of place with an increasingly nationalized set of concerns. Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea uncover how this overwhelmingly crucial voting bloc emerged and how it has roiled American politics. They show how perceptions of economic and social change, racial anxieties, and a traditional way of life under assault have converged into a belief in rural uniqueness and separateness.

Las vivencias recogidas en este tercer volumen de la serie iniciada con Entre limones y El loro en el limonero -que no sólo cosecharon un enorme éxito en España, sino que también suman más de un millón de ejemplares vendidos en Reino Unido- reflejan el particular talante de una persona con una incorregible tendencia a actuar movida por cierta visión idealista de las cosas.