LEADER 02130cam 2200193 a 4500
001 899392
005 20190104092822.0
008 190108s2018 nyuab g b 000 0 eng d
010 $a2017047910
020 $a9780374535803 (pbk.) :$cNT$595
024 8 $a40028126642
040 $aTWTNM$beng$dTWTNM
082 04$a814.6$222
100 1 $aWheeler, Joshua,$d1984-.
245 10$aAcid West :$bessays /$cJoshua Wheeler.
250 $a1st ed.
260 $aNew York :$bMCD x FSG Originals/Farrar, Straus and Giroux,$c2018.
300 $a395 p. :$bill., map ;$c20 cm.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references.
505 0 $aThe light of God -- Children of the gadget -- After the fall -- So let all the Martians come home to roost -- Truth or Consequences at the gateway to space -- Before the fall -- Raggedy, raggedy Wabbitman -- Living room -- Things most surely believed -- The glitch in the videogame graveyard -- Keep Alamogordo beautiful -- A million tiny daggers.
520 $aEarly on July 16, 1945, Joshua Wheeler's great grandfather awoke to a flash, and then a long rumble: the world's first atomic blast filled the horizon north of his ranch in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Out on the range, the cattle had been bleached white by the fallout. Acid West, Wheeler's stunning debut collection of essays, is full of these mutated cows: vestiges of the Old West that have been transformed, suddenly and irrevocably, by innovation. Traversing the New Mexico landscape his family has called home for seven generations, Wheeler excavates and reexamines these oddities, assembling a cabinet of narrative curiosities: a man who steps from the stratosphere and free-falls to the desert; a treasure hunt for buried Atari video games; a village plagued by the legacy of atomic testing; a lonely desert spaceport; a UFO festival during the paranoid Summer of Snowden. The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico. Acid West illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening, Acid West is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.
650 0$aTechnological innovations$xSocial aspects$zUnited States.
650 0$aPopular culture$xEffect of technological innovations on.
650 0$aNational characteristics, American.
650 0$aEssays.
651 0$aNew Mexico$xSocial conditions.
651 0$aUnited States$xSocial conditions$y21st century.