Compared to some of its New England neighbors, Vermont has seemed to long-time resident David Mamet a place of intrinsic energy and progressiveness, love and commonality. It has lived up to the old story that settlers came up the Connecticut River and turned right to get to New Hampshire and left to get to Vermont. Is Vermont's tradition of live and let live an accident of geography, the happy by-product of 200 years of national neglect, an emanation of its Scots-Irish regional character? In exploring the ways in which his decades in Vermont have shaped his character and his work, Mamet examines the intermingling of these strands and how the state's free-thinking tradition can survive in an age of increasing conglomeration. The result is a highly personal and compelling portrait of a truly unique place.

Enhanced by Mamet's beautiful photographic record of Vermont, South of the Northeast Kingdom is a profound and richly textured work written with all the wit, clarity, authority of expression, and passion for truth for which Mamet is known. It is sure to move and gratify every reader, left or right, from Vermont and far beyond.