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Laughing in the Hills
Bill Barich burst onto the literary scene more than twenty-five years ago with this remarkable account of racetrack life. Holed up in a cheap motel in Albany, California, only a few miles from Golden Gate Fields, he looked to the track to help him make sense of his life during a dark peiod of loss and challenge. With rare sensitivity, he captured the gritty world of the backstretch, and also its poetry, as few other writers have done. Laughing in the Hills, which was first serialized in the New Yorker, has become a classic of sporting literature and a must for anyone who loves horses and the world they create. “It is a lovely, valuable book, introspective without being self-servingly so, a...
Hard to Be Good
The first short story collection from the acclaimed non-fiction writer contains eight stories, six of which were originally published in the New Yorker. From a mildly troubled adolescent who moves from innocence to experience over the course of a summer with his estranged mother ("Hard to Be Good") to a former rock musician protecting himself against the bitterness of a failed romance ("Too Much Elecrticity"), Barich treats his characters with loving empathy and gentle humor. His eye for the specific and the delightful ease of his prose style allow him to find the extraordinary in the lives of ordinary Americans.
Hard to Be Good
In his first collection of short fiction, Bill Barich gives us cause to celebrate a prose stylist who can gracefully cross the boundaries of genre. As stated by Anne Tyler, Hard to Be Good is so large and complete that you tend to look up at the end and find yourself surprised that it’s still the same day. Set in the American West, as are three other of the seven stories in this book, it is about the unselfconscious struggle for wholeness in a divided family. Its adolescent protagonist moves from innocence to experience in the course of a summer vacation with his mother and her third husband, and the result is satisfying, rather than harrowing. The attempt to make signification relationshi...
Long Way Home
“We do not take a trip; a trip takes us,” John Steinbeck noted in his 1962 classic, Travels with Charley. In 2008, Bill Barich decided to explore the mood of the United States as Steinbeck had done almost a half century before. He set off on a 5,943 mile cross-country drive from New York to his old hometown of San Francisco on Route 50, a road twisting through the American heartland. Long Way Home is the stunning result of his pilgrimage. From the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the spectacular landscape of Moab, Utah, to Steinbeck’s own Salinas Valley, the book is filled with memorable encounters and rich in history and local color; a truthful, inspired account of a once-in-a-lifetime trip. It offers an incisive portrait of a nation divided and the grassroots dissatisfaction that ultimately catapulted Donald Trump into the White House. From the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the spectacular landscape of Moab, Utah, to Steinbeck's own Salinas Valley, filled with memorable encounters and redolent with history and local color, Long Way Home is a truthful, inspiring account of the country at a social and political crossroad.
A Pint of Plain
After meeting an Irishwoman in London and moving to Dublin, Bill Barich?a “blow-in,” or stranger, in Irish parlance?found himself looking for a traditional Irish pub to be his local. There are nearly 12,000 pubs in Ireland, so he appeared to have plenty of choices. He wanted a pub like the one in John Ford's classic movie, The Quiet Man, offering talk and drink with no distractions, but such pubs are now scare as publicans increasingly rely on flat-screen televisions, rock music, even Texas Hold ‘Em to attract a dwindling clientele. For Barich, this signaled that something deeper was at play?an erosion of the essence of Ireland, perhaps without the Irish even being aware. A Pint of Pla...
Refiguring the Map of Sorrow
Allister (English, St. Olaf College) examines works by six authors which fuse autobiography, literary nonfiction, and environmental literature into a distinct form of "grief narrative." Each of these authors "... begins in depression that shadows grief; each comes to put an end to depression, to move through mourning, by turning observations and stories of the external world into a narrative that heals." The six works featured are Sue Hubbell's A Country Year, Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge, Bill Barich's Laughing in the Hills, William Least Heat-Moons' Blue Highways, Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, and Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Crazy for Rivers
“That autumn, I went a little crazy for rivers.” So writes Bill Barich, and this charming volume captures the essence of obsession. The hours he spent on various streams became a meditation on family, friends, and the natural world. To anyone who remembers the infinite patience of a grandfather on a lake, or the romance of a mountain getaway with a new girlfriend; to anyone who can recall each fish caught on days that were far too hot, or way too cold, or on rivers too crowded, or in canyons too steep; to anyone who has appreciated the trust of an age-old fishing partner, or marveled at the beauty of a leaping trout—to anyone, in fact, who has ever gone a little crazy for rivers, Bill ...
Horse Racing
A collection of photographs from the golden age of horse racing featuring trainers, jockeys, thoroughbreds, and celebrity fans.
The Only Game in Town
For more than eighty years, The New Yorker has been home to some of the toughest, wisest, funniest, and most moving sportswriting around. The Only Game in Town is a classic collection from a magazine with a deep bench, including such authors as Roger Angell, John Updike, Don DeLillo, and John McPhee. Hall of Famer Ring Lardner is here, bemoaning the lowering of standards for baseball achievement—in 1930. John Cheever pens a story about a boy’s troubled relationship with his father and the national pastime. From Lance Armstrong to bullfighter Sidney Franklin, from the Chinese Olympics to the U.S. Open, the greatest plays and players, past and present, are all covered in The Only Game in T...
