Chosen Country
A Rebellion in the West
by James Pogue
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Pub Date May 22 2018 | Archive Date May 22 2018
Henry Holt & Company | Henry Holt and Co.
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Description
"Whoever you are, whatever side you’re on, if you care about the American west and what’s happening to it, read this book."
—Caroline Fraser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires
An extraordinary inside look at America’s militia movement that shows a country at the crossroads of class, culture, and insurrection.
In a remote corner of Oregon, James Pogue found himself at the heart of a rebellion. Granted unmatched access by Ammon Bundy to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Pogue met ranchers and militiamen ready to die fighting the federal government.
He witnessed the fallout of communities riven by politics and the danger (and allure) of uncompromising religious belief. The occupation ended in the shooting death of one rancher, the imprisonment of dozens more, and a firestorm over the role of government that engulfed national headlines.
In a raw and restless narrative that roams the same wild terrain as his literary forebears Edward Abbey and Hunter S. Thompson, Pogue's Chosen Country examines the underpinnings of this rural uprising and struggles to reconcile diverging ideas of freedom, tracing a cultural fault line that spans the nation.
Advance Praise
— Emma Cline, New York Times bestselling author of The Girls
"James Pogue's Chosen Country is an urgent and captivating dispatch from inside an American insurgency led by self-made prophet Ammon Bundy. But at its most compelling, it also provides a window into the psyche of white men searching for a cause and finding it in the mythology of the West, which has always been our most potent vision of American freedom."—Karolina Waclawiak, author of The Invaders
"Part Graham Greene, part Ed Abbey by way of Vice, James Pogue is the unlikely reporter-narrator of this compulsively readable, incisively written exposé of what’s been called 'Y’all Qaeda'—the homegrown American militia movement—and 'Yeehad,' the mini-insurgency it waged at Oregon’s remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January, 2016. Embedded in the standoff as it unfolded, Pogue straddles a fine ethical line between maintaining friendships with the participants while reporting for the New York Times. But his disarmingly casual tone masks a deeply thoughtful analysis of the movement’s historical antecedents and its messianic Mormon roots. Chronicling with empathy the widespread rural powerlessness and alienation that gave rise to the Bundy family—cowpoke cranks who fetishize the Constitution—Pogue never loses sight of the movement’s devotion to its own victimhood. He is particularly effective in revealing the cult of personality that built up around Ammon Bundy, who sees angels directing his actions and lets others take the fall for his grandiosity. Whoever you are, whatever side you’re on, if you care about the American west and what’s happening to it, read this book."
—Caroline Fraser, author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781250169129 |
| PRICE | $28.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 304 |
