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Hidden America : from coal miners to cowboys, an extraordinary exploration of the unseen people who make this country work / Jeanne Marie Laskas.

by Laskas, Jeanne Marie, 1958-

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New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, c2012.

Laskas, Jeanne Marie, 1958- -- Travel -- United States.

Working class -- United States -- Social conditions.

Working class -- United States -- Biography.

Working class -- United States -- Social life and customs.

Manual work -- Social aspects -- United States.

Subculture -- United States.

United States -- Description and travel.

United States -- Social conditions -- 1980-

United States -- Social life and customs -- 1971-

9780399159008 (acid-free paper) :

0399159002 (acid-free paper)

318 p. ; 24 cm.

Underworld: Hopedale Mining, Cadiz, Ohio -- Hecho en America: Migrant Labor Camp, Cherryfield, Maine -- G-L-O-R-Y: Paul Brown Stadium, Cincinnati, Ohio -- Traffic: Air Traffic Control Tower, LaGuardia Airport, New York, New York -- Guns 'r' Us: Sprague's Sports, Yuma, Arizona -- Beef: R.A. Brown Ranch, Throckmorton, Texas -- The Rig: Pioneer National Resources Oil Rig, Oooguruk Island, off the shores of Alaska's North Slope -- Sputter: I-80, Exit 284, Walcott, Iowa -- This is Paradise: Puente Hills Landfill, City of Industry, California.

This book looks at the remarkable men and women whose low-profile accomplishments contribute to the running of the nation, from coal miners and oil rig workers to migrant laborers and air traffic controllers. Five hundred feet underground, the author asked a coal miner named Smitty, "Do you think it's weird that people know so little about you?" He replied, "I don't think people know too much about the way the whole damn country works." This book intends to fix that. Like John McPhee and Susan Orlean, the author dives deep into her subjects and emerges with character-driven narratives that are gripping, funny, and revelatory. In this book the stories are about the people who make our lives run every day, and yet we barely think of them. The author spent weeks in an Ohio coal mine and on an Alaskan oil rig; in a Maine migrant labor camp, a Texas beef ranch, the air traffic control tower at New York's LaGuardia Airport, a California landfill, an Arizona gun shop, the cab of a long haul truck in Iowa, and the stadium of the Cincinnati Ben-Gals cheerleaders. Cheerleaders? Yes. They, too, are hidden America, and you will be amazed by what this book tells you about them: hidden no longer.

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