A book about America by one of the greatest writers of the American West This book is an attempt, by sampling, to say something about how the American people and the American land have interacted, how they have shaped one another; what patterns of life, with what chances of continuity, have arisen out of the confrontations between an unformed society and a virgin continent. Perhaps it is less a book about the American land than some ruminationsabout the making of America. . . . We are the unfinished product of a long becoming.
--from American Places

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