Acid West: Essays (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780374535803)

A rollicking debut book of essays that takes readers on a trip through the muck of American myths that have settled in the desert of our country's underbelly

Early on July 16, 1945, Joshua Wheeler's great grandfather awoke to a flash, and then a long rumble: the world's first atomic blast filled the horizon north of his ranch in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Out on the range, the cattle had been bleached white by the fallout.

Acid West, Wheeler's stunning debut collection of essays, is full of these mutated cows: vestiges of the Old West that have been transformed, suddenly and irrevocably, by innovation. Traversing the New Mexico landscape his family has called home for seven generations, Wheeler excavates and reexamines these oddities, assembling a cabinet of narrative curiosities: a man who steps from the stratosphere and free-falls to the desert; a treasure hunt for buried Atari video games; a village plagued by the legacy of atomic testing; a lonely desert spaceport; a UFO festival during the paranoid Summer of Snowden.

The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico. Acid West illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening, Acid West is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.

Author: Joshua Wheeler
ISBN-10: 0374535809
ISBN-13: 9780374535803
Publisher: MCD X Fsg Originals
Language: English
Published: 04/17/2018
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 7.60h x 5.00w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2018
Publishers Weekly 02/26/2018
Booklist 03/15/2018 pg. 11
Library Journal 04/01/2018 pg. 75
Shelf Awareness 05/11/2018