A landmark collection by New York Times journalist Dan Barry, selected from a decade of his distinctive This Land columns and presenting a powerful but rarely seen portrait of America.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and on the eve of a national recession, New York Times writer Dan Barry launched a column about America: not the one populated only by cable-news pundits, but the America defined and redefined by those who clean the hotel rooms, tend the beet fields, endure disasters both natural and manmade. As the name of the president changed from Bush to Obama to Trump, Barry was crisscrossing the country, filing deeply moving stories from the tiniest dot on the American map to the city that calls itself the Capital of the World.
Complemented by the select images of award-winning Times photographers, these narrative and visual snapshots of American life create a majestic tapestry of our shared experience, capturing how our nation is at once flawed and exceptional, paralyzed and ascendant, as cruel and violent as it can be gentle and benevolent.
Dan Barry is a longtime columnist and reporter for The New York Times and the author of four books, including the forthcoming “The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland.” Set to be released in May 2016, the book tells the story of dozens of men with intellectual disability who spent decades working at an Iowa turkey-processing plant, living in an old schoolhouse, and enduring exploitation and abuse – before finding justice and achieving freedom. As the “This Land” columnist for the Times, Barry traveled to all 50 states, where he met the coroner from “The Wizard of Oz,” learned the bump-and-grind from a mostly retired burlesque queen, and was hit in the chest by an Asian carp leaping out of the Illinois River. He has since recovered -- though the condition of the carp remains unknown. He has reported extensively on many topics, including the World Trade Center disaster and its aftermath and the damage to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He has also been the City Hall bureau chief, the Long Island bureau chief, a sportswriter, a general assignment reporter, and, for three years, the “About New York” columnist – all for the Times. Barry previously worked for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn., and for The Providence Journal, where he and two other reporters won a George Polk Award for an investigation into the causes of a state banking crisis. In 1994, he and the other members of the Journal’s investigative team won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about Rhode Island’s court system; the series led to various reforms and the criminal indictment of the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court. Barry has also written “Pull Me Up: A Memoir”; “City Lights: Stories About New York,” a collection of his “About New York” columns; and “Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game,” which received the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.
These are the stories I want to read about America right now: specific individual and true stories, not politically motivated in either direction, not stories of famous people or politicians. I've heard so many people asking in the last year "What is going to heal America and bring us together as one people?" I think the answer can be found in This Land - empathy through storytelling and storyreading.
The mid-terms 2018 are in 3 days. How much do we know about THIS LAND before we vote?
I am unsure where to start in this disappointing review of an even more disappointing book. I had very high hopes for this one and quickly picked it up off of my shelf when it came time to decide which book to read next.
What I found within the pages were the writings of an author who failed to keep his political views out of the stories of the people in small town America that he tasked himself with representing. I recently read and reviewed Humans, by Brandon Stanton-a book that much more successfully completed the mission of telling the lives of people around the world (not just America) and painting a picture in an unbiased way. Perhaps it was my own shortcomings as a reader that expected this book, by an allegedly equally acclaimed and published author to be able to do the same. In my opinion, he was vastly unable to do so.
Starting straight from the introduction, Dan Barry managed to wedge political slants in the stories of people he spoke with across America, discussing their trials and tribulations. Very rarely, in a book of almost 400 pages, did you read even one snippet of an inspiring story. The full title of the book, "This Land: America, Lost and Found" should be appropriately renamed to the theme of the book, "This Land: America, Lost."
Not to mention the elementary writing style of the author himself-short sentence after short sentence, as if he is uneducated in any other way to engage an audience or drive a point home. This was a challenging read-due not at all to the difficult lifes of those the stories try to speak about; but rather due to the completely broken up, illiterate way in which the author desperately tries to convey emotion.
Sure, within some of the stories the people who spoke about their story inserted a half-hearted attempt at some semblance of hope, but that was their story to tell. It should have been told without the passive-aggressive undertones of one political party making it that much harder for those to achieve hope-conveniently enough the party opposite to the beliefs of Mr. Dan Barry.
This book got a two star review because of a select few stories within that did in fact pull at your heartstrings, of course when not being offset by the whinings of a prejudiced author, who is seemingly very, very quick to cast his prejudice onto the other political party.
I feel as if you are going to embark on the story of America, and the Americans you speak of, you are to tell their story, and their story alone, as told by them. Interjections of bias on either political party are simply not yours to tell, and should be left unequivocally out of any sentence published. That being said, the stars in this book are devoted strictly to the few stories in here which got my undivided attention and emotion.
We have the story of old Annie, a woman who was a staple in the South Street fish market of NY who's big heart and big humor made her an undeniable icon, the story of Daryl and Ed, recovering alcoholics who found solace and comfort, and even recovery, in one anothers friendships through shared trials and tribulations. There is the story the lovable Vovo, a Portugese grandmother devoted to feeding the people who visit the soup kitchen in need; she does all this despite her own hardships and needs. You have the stories of a woman devoted to her diner business 'Donna's Diner' in Elyria, Ohio, until the financial hardship crippled her and her business, despite being a glimmer of hope for others.
We read about countless other individuals who struggle to keep the heat on and the lights on, stories of love undying, stories of rebuilding after disaster, and you realize the world is bigger than yourself, your troubles are no bigger than yourself...until you stumble upon another biased, critical, blame-pointing sentence by our insufferable author.
I would urge you only to read this book if only you are in the need for extra kindling for your firepit, after you are done with it.
You cannot paint a picture of America by only telling one side of the story. Needless to say, when it comes to telling both sides of the coin, Dan Barry failed miserably, falling and stumbling further down on the staircase with story, after story. Worse still, you did injustice to the people whose stories you had a responsibilty to tell.
This Land is a portrait of America, made up of small portraits of ordinary people.
Some of the stories are hopeful - others heartbreaking. However, all of them together give us a mosaic of America often missed when watching partisan stores on the news or bite sized items on Twitter.
The book does leave you wanting. You want to know so much more about these people and their triumphs and tragedies.
Even with such a wide range of lives presented, I still felt like it was missing a little something. I guess America, with all her cultures and stories, is too big for such a book.
Dan Barry’s book, THIS LAND - America, Lost and Found, is a collection of poignant vignettes that beautifully capture this eclectic country of ours. Finishing the last page, I hugged the book to my chest and wistfully said, “I love this book. I didn’t want it to end.” (My husband, never quite sure how to respond to these declarations, simply raised both eyebrows and quickly went back to his crossword puzzle.)
Barry, who had been writing a twice-weekly column for the New York Times titled, “About New York” explains in his introduction how a new column — “This Land” came into existence. In 2005, while still working on “About New York,” Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. He and Times photographer Nicole Bengiveno were reassigned to cover a “larger American” story. While there, he found many. One about an abandoned corpse left to decay in a hot September sun, another about communities “immersed in mucky black waters” and others of search and rescue. All of these stories and more sparked the idea about a “wandering national column.”
The name, “This Land” was inspired by the words and music of Woody Guthrie, Barry explained, “—mostly through the muse of Pete Seeger, a secular saint in my boyhood home.” And Barry couldn’t help mentioning that he knew by heart the “lesser-known lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land” — about the other side of that No Trespassing sign saying nothing—that side that “was made for you and me.” All fifty states are reflected in Barry’s stories.
“Given our fractured and fractious times,” he writes, “you could argue that this country has no center; that what exists instead is an ever-widening chasm between the reds and blues, the haves and have-nots, the rural and urban, us and them…But as I traveled the country for a decade, from 2007 to 2017, politics rarely entered my mind. With no campaign events to attend, no polling data to interpret, I lingered and listened, following the advice of Tom Heslin, a good friend and my editor long ago at the Provident Journal, who told me once: ‘Slow it down.’
“The men and women I encountered were not numbers to be tallied in yet another political survey; they were individuals, trying to get through another day in America. By slowing it down, I witnessed their wills being tested by crime, by fates, by natural disaster…to echo Faulkner, I saw them endure. And that is what, I think, this volume of columns and stories conveys: The American endurance that transcends politics, and is ever-present no matter the presidential era.”
THIS LAND is divided into eight parts: Change, Hope, Misdeeds, Intolerance, Hard Times, Nature, Grace, and The Ever-Present Past. Every story touches a chord leaving something to reexamine. I found myself smiling, distressed and inspired throughout. Barry’s writing is exquisite. Every writer will find inspiration in his vivid and sometimes subtle wordplay.
Ric Burns notes Barry has, “a Dickensian breadth of curiosity and compassion.” While Colum McCann finds Barry “is the closest thing we have to a contemporary Steinbeck.” I see more Steinbeck than Dickens but more Dan Barry than anyone else. He’s a force all unto his own.
If I had to narrow my favorite pieces in THIS LAND to five, I would pick:
“A Refugee Home, Furnished in Joy”- from Lancaster, PA, which gave me hope; “A Rough Script of Life, if Ever There Was One”- from Chadron, Neb. that made me laugh; “A Violation of Both the Law and the Spirit”- Ripton, VT- teenagers vandalizing Robert Frost’s preserved farmhouse. Barry writes, “Imagining still, as all poets invite us to, you can almost see Frost observing the vandalism and aftermath from that cabin above, wondering briefly whether these youths were, say, acolytes of Carl Sandburg, exacting revenge because Frost considered their hero poet second-rate.” Ha! “A Quiet Act of Decency Soars over Messages of Hate” - Columbia, SC - a black state trooper carefully ushers a heat exhausted protestor into the air-conditioned State House. The protester, btw, was a white supremacist. “A Ranger, a Field and the Flight 93 Story Retold”- Shanksville, PA - 61 year-old Robert Franz, an “interpretive park ranger,” job is to “tell the story of what happened in that color-dappled field behind him, again and again and again.” Lump in throat.
Tomorrow I will undoubtedly pick five different favorites from THIS LAND — America, Lost and Found.
Woody Guthrie got it right, and so did Dan Barry. This land was made for you and me.
This is a series of newspaper columns - stories, really - that ran in the New York Times from 2007 to 2017. So, for the timeline, think the end of Bush the younger's presidency, through the Obama years and the Great Recession, and then the beginning of Trump. And while it's not really political, there are times when the actions of those in power are mentioned, such as when an emigrant from El Salvador in the Culinary Union finds herself working at a non-union Trump hotel in Las Vegas during the 2016 election for $3 an hour less than housekeepers at union hotel/casinos, or when Congress and the Obama Administration trimmed the energy assistance program that helps retirees in the Northeast pay for home heating oil. But This Land is an up-close and personal look at Americans in all walks of life. From the Arizona schoolgirl who, immediately upon high school graduation, enlists in the Army so she can afford to go to college on the G.I. Bill. To the USNPS ranger in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, who tells the story of United Flight 93 every day, day after day, to tourists. To the survivors of the leper colony on Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaii, who have chosen to stay on the island even though they are cured because it's all they've ever known. To the pastor of a black congregation in Massachusetts whose glorious under-construction church is burned down on election night 2008 because of white outrage and intolerance. To the devastating effects of the BP oil spill on the Gulf Coast. And on and on. Here's an example of the writing: "Janay sets out at 7:05 today for a city school system in which poverty, politics and mismanagement so closely conspire against the likes of her that the state recently decided to take it over. But who knows what that takeover means for this lanky girl with braids, now lugging gym clothes, math homework and a world history textbook the size and weight of a slate slab you'd find along a footpath. Wearing a thin blue sweatshirt over a T-shirt that says "Purrfect,"she moves through the St. Louis gloom, past the dry cleaners' trellised gates of security, past an alley where no child should play, past buildings that are well kept and buildings that are vacant, their window frames like empty eye sockets. A man in an old green Volvo passing by beeps his horn. He is Travis L. Brown, the principal of her high school, Beaumont. He grew up near here, one of ten children. Enforcer and guardian, he drives the streets before the morning bell to signal that school matters, that he cares. I've been there and now I'm here, his actions say." If you're a fan of true Americana, look no further than This Land.
An interesting book as collections of well written journalism go. It's a compilation of relatively brief pieces that are of its time. I enjoyed dipping in and out of this but it's not a keeper. There's no overarching narrative or theme.
Dan Barry is a columnist and reporter for the NEW YORK TIMES, and this is a collection of some of his columns/articles from 2007-2017. I loved each story, whether it was set in New York City or Elyria, Ohio. (There's even a real estate story set in Utah, with a brief mention of my small home town. That kind of freaked me out!) I will admit that some of these stories are downright sad and depressing, but I think I needed to read them to understand more about life outside my little comfortable world. Some of the stories are beautifully uplifting, as well, and each one is masterfully written. Barry is an amazing writer, and with each story, I feel like he really cares about the people and situations he's writing about. There's no condescension or political slant, just masterful story-telling.
I'm a sucker for this kind of episodic book - in this case, the author spent 10 years wandering the country looking for interesting stories - with no particular agenda. They are grouped into related segments, but still manage to span the country. As perhaps one of the liberal elite, it's good to make acquaintance with these folks without having politics running a line between us
These snippets of Americana are readable and accessible and nicely packaged, wrapped in nice writing, but many are familiar archetypes cut from American life: the WW2 veteran, the coal miner fallen on hard times, the small business owner trying to make it, the bag lady with the heart of gold. The book is highly appealing, but what to make of any of it? America is a bit more of a complicated tweed than the fabric woven here. The book is clearly meant to soothe. But where is the GreenParty candidate? The volunteer veterinarian working on homeless pets in San Francisco? The birth control counselor? The fetal tissue researcher? The pomegranate farm laborer? What about barge workers, Christmas tree farm owners, so much more. After reading it, I just wanted to know about people who import chihuahuas! There are far more interesting stories to be told than those of many of the people here, still chasing diner dreams. The best one to me was the leprosy patient in Hawaii—who could’ve seen that coming?
One outright complaint is the weight of the book — it is large and awkwardly sized, printed on heavy stock. I admit it: I was glad when it was time to put it down.
I knew I would love this one before I started reading it, as Dan Barry is my favorite reporter and "This Land," his human-interest NY Times column about Americans finding a way through struggles in this country, is everything I ask for from journalism. It's a collection of stories from a decade's worth of travels, and it includes beautiful color photos taken for the stories when they were published. Barry finds the fascinating details and perspectives in the lives of those whose voices have often not been heard, and whose stories have often not been told. If only these kinds of stories were filling up the news feeds on our phones today ...
This was a relatively fun book to read, because you can pick it up and put it down, almost at any point; it is comprised of news-like articles about places and things in America. The loss of the agrarian community and small towns, the impactful article on the young woman warrior, the tales of wars won and lost by communities, and the tough resilience of the American people persist throughout this interesting book of articles.
A poetic take on what makes Americans American (and what makes America America). Barry writes about people and places with honesty and respect. Every person and place is different, and yet we can see ourselves in them. There are no politics. The stories just are. We need more literature like this in our country right now.
A really interesting cross section of America. I’ve read some of these pieces before: Lori Sousa, Obama highway and some of the pieces around Deep Horizon spill but I loved how they were collected and themed in this. Especially appreciated the epilogues where available.
This is a book on the columns from Dan Berry over the years, with epilogues on some of them, it shows the heart of this country and the problems which still afflict it's citizens.