Bad Land

Jonathan Raban's enthralling journey into the history of the Great Plains of Montana - the least populated, most uncharted region of the United States - to uncover the heart and soul of the country. Bringing to life the extraordinary landscape of the prairie and the homesteaders whose dreams foundered there, and reaching through history to the present day, Bad Land uncovers the dangerous legacy of American innocence gone sour. Reissued with a new introduction from Jane Smiley, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, this is Jonathan Raban at his finest. 'Bad Land should be recognized as a blazing classic' - Sunday Telegraph

Jonathan Raban was the author of over a dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction, including Passage to Juneau, Bad Land, Hunting Mister Heartbreak, Coasting, Old Glory, Arabia, Soft City, Waxwings and Surveillance. Over the span of six decades, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award, the Thomas Cook Award, the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award, and the Governor's Award of the State of Washington. His work appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Harpers, The New York Review of Books, Outside, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, The London Review of Books, and other magazines. In 1990 Raban, a British citizen, moved from London to Seattle, where he lived with his daughter until his death in 2023.