Exploring the Beloved Country : Geographic Forays into American Society and Culture (American Land and Life Ser.)

For fifty years geographer Wilbur Zelinsky has charted the social, cultural, and historical map of the American experience. A self-confessed incurable landscape voyeur, he has produced order and pattern from massive amounts of data, zestfully finding societal meaning in the terra incognita of our postmodern existence.

Now he has gathered his most original and exciting explorations into a volume that captures the nature and dynamics of this remarkable phenomenon we call the United States of America. Each the product of Zelinsky's joyous curiosity, these energetic essays trace the innermost contours of our bewildering American reality.

"Successfully combines the science of geography with the humanity of geography."
-- Roger Welsch

"The gathered yield of a great career, this spacious volume is the apt companion to Zelinsky's superb Cultural Geography of the United States. In fine, clear prose, Zelinsky probes, connects, and questions, urging us to new understandings of the American reality. Balancing stories on the spatial plane, he clears new ground enough to keep generations of investigators happily, productively at work."
-- Henry Glassie

"If there is an unstudied cultural phenomenon, Zelinsky will find some way to measure it, map it, explain it, and assess its significance to our national life. And, if the truth were told, he does it for himself. You and I get to go along for the ride. He needs a scene as broad and diverse as North America to satisfy his insatiable interest in human diversity and cultural change."
-- Calvin L. Beale

Zelinsky is professor emeritus of geography at Pennsylvania State University.

D. W. Meinig is Maxwell Research Professor of Geography at Syracuse University.