The Wild West and the Untamed American, by Evan Wright

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Hella Nation is about a free country.  As a child, when I used to see the Wild West depicted in movies it seemed an ideal American fantasy: a wide open place where anyone could escape from civilization and re-invent himself. In fiction, the frontier was filled mostly with outlaws, swindlers and the odd cultist group, and nefarious as they were they seemed to affirm the absolute freedom of the place. When I was forced to read Huck Finn in middle school, riverboat con artists like the Duke and the King immediately became my favorite characters. Coming of age as I did in an era of mini-malls, corporate rock, anti-smoking laws, and anxiety about children playing with cap guns, it seemed that the days of a wide-open, lawless frontier America had long ago passed.

But when I began to fit the pieces together that make Hella Nation--travels and essays done largely along the West Coast (with one excursion with U.S. troops into the frontier of south Afghanistan) during the past decade--I was struck by the similarities between the actual Americans I have profiled in the present day, and the characters of the mythic West. From the outlaws, to the colorful swindlers, to the young men and women in uniform seeking to avenge 9/11 and bring back bin Laden dead or alive, the American frontier types remain very much alive. In the future, the current era will no doubt seem as violent, half-civilized and filled with as many improbable characters as the Old West appears to us. Hella Nation is filled with dark characters, but as I see them they also affirm that despite the best efforts of many, we remain a defiantly free and often totally untamed people.   

Evan Wright, Hella Nation, Putnam, Penguin Books