- Published: 01/11/2012
- ISBN: 9781847087874
- Granta Books
- 224 pages
The Meadowlands
Robert Sullivan
Just five miles west of New York City, the Meadowlands is an untamed, vilified, half-developed and smelly tract of swampland. It is home to rare birds and missing bodies, tranquil marshes and a major sports arena, burning garbage dumps and corporate headquarters, the remains of the original Penn Station and possibly those of more than one mafioso. Acclaimed writer Robert Sullivan proves himself to be the perfect explorer, historian and archaeologist for this fragile yet amazingly resilient region. He tramps through the muck on foot and navigates the polluted rivers in a canoe, all the while describing the industrial detritus with as much zeal as he observes the surprisingly rich diversity of wildlife. The Meadowlands is an ode to an overlooked American borderland, a delightfully incongruous battleground marking the ongoing struggle between the forces of progress and nature.
£8.99
Sullivan's book is a journey into nature, the past, polluting and eccentricity ... You'll be giving this book for birthdays and holidays as long as you're alive
Frank McCourt
Sullivan's account of the Meadowlands is anecdotal and genial, but his book takes up serious matters ... this book suggests a challenging new model for how we ought to pay attention
New York Times Book Review
From the Same Author
Rats
Robert Sullivan
Surprisingly funny and compulsively readable, Rats is an unlikely account of a year spent in a garbage-strewn alley in lower Manhattan. Sullivan spends the year with a notebook and night-vision goggles, hunting for fabled rat-kings, trapping a rat of his own, and trying (and failing) to conquer his own fear of rats. He meets the exterminators, garbage men and civic activists who play their part in the centuries-old war between human city-dweller and wild city rat. He travels to a bizarre Midwestern conference on rats that brings together the leading experts on rat history, behaviour, and control (did you know that one pair of rats can produce 15,000 descendants in a year? That rats’ teeth are harder than steel?). In the process, he discovers the many ways in which rats’ lives mirror those of humans. Sullivan’s unusual and absorbing book earns a place alongside the classics of travel writing.
