Around the World in 22 Books
Old Glory by Jonathan
Raban
First published in 1981.
This edition by Picador.
Raban tackles the Mississippi River in
a spartan sixteen-foot motorboat describing the river and the astonishingly
varied lives of the people who live along its banks. Whether he is fishing
for walleye or hunting coon, discussing theology in Prairie Du Chien or
race relations in Memphis, he is an expert observer of the heartland's
estrangement from America's capitals of power and culture, and its helpless
nostalgia for its lost past.
