Tuesday, August 25, 2009
In 1982, William T. Vollmann traveled with the mujahedeen forming the basis of his first non-fiction publication, An Afghanistan Picture Show, or, How I Saved the World. His book, Central Europe, won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction. The writer has now amassed more than 13,000 pages of published material. In Imperial, Vollmann details the border region of the Imperial Valley in southeast California, and the complex social and economic history of the people at the crux of U.S.-Mexico relations. Then, Andrew Blechman was shocked when his older New England neighbors put their house up for sale. He was even more surprised when he learned they were moving to The Villages in central Florida. It’s the world’s largest gated retirement community, takes up more space than Manhattan and includes a golf course for every day of the month. Blechman explores this rapidly growing trend in his book titled “Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias.” It’s now out in paperback.