Lone Patriot: The Short Career of an American Militiaman - Hardcover

Kramer, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067944873X ISBN 13: 9780679448730

Publisher: Pantheon, 2002

Synopsis

Mark Strand wrote of Jane Kramer’s book Europeans that it was “so effortless in its dispensations, so intelligent, so well written, that as journalism it’s in a class by itself.” In Lone Patriot, Kramer, who covers Europe for The New Yorker, now turns to America with an enthralling portrait of the commander-in-chief of an erstwhile Patriot army called the Washington State Militia.

In 1996 Kramer made the first of what would be many trips to Whatcom County, Washington, to talk to John Pitner and some of the veterans of Alpha One, his “leadership” squad. Through their voices, Pitner’s in particular, Kramer tells the story of a movement that surfaced in America in the nineties, as the millennium approached, and has continued—its resolve, if anything, strengthened by the events of the past year—into the new century. Her powerful evocations of Whatcom County could easily describe any number of rural communities in the Pacific Northwest today—a place of refuge to a strange assortment of conspiracy theorists, armed “constitutionalists,” white supremacists, county secessionists, Freemen, and Christian fanatics, and to the kind of groups that survive on their discontent.

Kramer has been described as a writer who combines the art of a novelist and the eye of a social historian. Lone Patriot, with its wayward characters and their “Patriot” obsessions, is a timely and compelling narrative from one of America’s most important writers.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Jane Kramer has bravely gone into the belly of a beast which is alive and well in America and which most of us prefer not to acknowledge. We avoid looking where she takes us, in Lone Patriot, at our peril."
-- Bob Kerrey

"By turns hilarious and harrowing, Lone Patriot offers one of the most richly textured and deeply affecting narratives of Jane Kramer's remarkable career."
-- Lawrence Wechsler

"The American militia movement would seem to be an unlikely subject for Jane Kramer, the wonderful European correspondent for The New Yorker. But she has summoned all her formidable intelligence, usually lavished on Paris and Berlin, to describe some angry Americans in rural Washington State. The results are brilliant. Jane Kramer is a poet of discontent and delusion, and in Whatcom County she has found a great subject."
-- Ward Just

"Jane Kramer has a genius for making troubled people in troubled situations come alive. Because she is insatiably curious, full of subtle insights and wonderfully well-informed, she understands obsessions, the ideas behind the obsessions and the historical forces behind the ideas. But the victims of obsession interest her even more and she writes about them as vividly as any novelist. She is also a brilliant stylist - witty, ironic, alert to every nuance, utterly unfooled, and with that uniquely New Yorker gift for talking with great elegance out of the side of her mouth. To my mind, Jane Kramer is one of the best writers in America and Lone Patriot is one of her best books."
-- A.Alvarez

About the Author

Jane Kramer has written The New Yorker’s “Letter from Europe” for more than twenty years. She is the author of eight previous books, among them The Last Cowboy, Europeans, and The Politics of Memory, and has been the recipient of many awards, including a National Book Award. With Europeans, she became the first woman, and the first American, to win the Prix Européen de l’Essai “Charles Veillon,” Europe’s most prestigious award for nonfiction. She divides her time between Europe and New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 067944873X
• ISBN 13: 9780679448730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272