Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten by Kate Brown

Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten Reviews

• 
  Nancy Regan

  Places that have more of a past than a future deserve compassionate, sensitive biographers. In Kate Brown a few of these places have found a midwife who seeks to spark a "project of rebirth" for them. She pokes around in their ashes, looking for the fragments that, when reassembled, could help them to find their meaning again.
  
  The charming, unsophisticated cover art belies the darkness and emptiness of the damaged districts it depicts. Brown takes us to the Chernobyl Zone, to the environs of Russia's first plutonium plant and to an old in central Ukraine, pondering the ethics of privacy invasion and disaster tourism along the way. Some places are uncomfortably close to home. One, I’m astonished to find, is in my very backyard, a place I must have passed hundreds of times without noticing. It’s the Panama Hotel, on South Main Street near 6th Avenue South in Seattle, whose basement has the plaintive luggage of some of the almost 13,000 Washington residents of Japanese ancestry who were removed from the area and interned at Minidoka, near Hunt, Idaho.
  
  Brown is an unabashedly personal historian. She downplays the goal of objectivity and acknowledges that she brings individual experience to her observations. This influences what she notices, what she sees past, through or around, and how she interprets what she focusses on. As a dweller in the 21st century (see how I confuse time with place?), it is inevitable that I would float on the tide of this postmodern challenge of historiography. It’s an enriching experience.
  
• 
  モーリー

  I like the approach to telling history here, but the book itself feels somewhat disjointed, not quite all tied together, and at times rambling despite being so short. I did like it but just wish I liked it more.
• 
  Rhys

  I enjoyed the history, the historical method, and Brown's insights into places that are in the process of being left behind - seeing the detritus (people, places, things) is perhaps the single-most useful perspective to understand contemporary times.
  
  "Places offer up only remnants, tattered, muddy, sunken, rusted, and despoiled. Once I am in place, things are out of place, disorganized and chaotic, … 'Visibility,” Bruno Latour writes, “is the consequence of lots of opaque and ‘invisible’ work''" (p.5).
  
  This book as encouraged me to re-read E.H. Carr's What is History?
• 
  Geoff

  Kate Brown is a friend. That said. An amazing book. About the act of writing, questioning objectivity, questioning assumptions about archives. Finding in her research and questions self, place and a host of other things. A gifted writer. A must read for anyone in policy, history, literature, education and so on.
• 
  Farfoff

  Parts of this were utterly fascinating. Partly because I had read other books by this author, some of this seemed like background / repeat material.
  
  Read: the grid city parts, the elgin parts, the "no bomb" in Detroit parts.
  Read: the parts about how the plutonium city doctors approached US and Russian patients
  
  Skip / Skim the rest and see if there are part that catch your attention. I didn't care for the discussion about narration, insertion of the author in history, etc.
  
• 
  Bonnie

  An utterly engrossing contemporary history of forgotten and destroyed places.
• 
  Kuang Ting

  (1)燈塔守望者
  20世紀英國最知名的口述歷史學家Tony Parker寫過好幾本「邊緣人」的故事。
  他擁有一種讓人敞開心扉的超能力，讓受訪者掏心掏肺的講述自己的生命體驗，Tony會拿著錄音機記錄訪談內容，接著回到書房優雅地將他們的口語寫成文字，歷史學家的任務就是將發生的事件記錄成文本，供未來世代的研究者或讀者參照。傳統上，人類的歷史等同英雄及天才的歷史，幾千年後的今天，我們依然熟悉亞歷山大當年如何征戰四方，建立一個橫跨歐亞的大帝國；羅馬的興亡史被改編成科幻小說《基地系列》，用另一種型式讓凱薩、尼祿大帝等人永生。中國的歷史也是如此，炎黃子孫五千年，遙想當年堯舜禪讓，東方民主的濫觴，不過秦始皇開啟家天下，西漢獨尊儒術，子曰集體秩序大於個人，老子的無為而治被當成耳邊風，統治者參照法家及馬基維利的君王論，強化中央集權，無微不至，監控資本主義才是2020年代的新世界秩序。
  
  總之，史書上的一切都是宏觀又壯烈的，升斗小民不曾著墨一滴於史書，歷史學有研究方法論，歷史解釋和歷史事實的區別，都是由掌權者來決定。大江東去浪淘盡，千古風流人物。多麼瀟灑! 平凡人則是大人物的時代背景，一將功成萬骨枯。不過再怎麼輝煌~舊時王謝堂前燕，飛入尋常百姓家。我可能就是太尋常了，導致斑鳩一直來築巢。我很喜歡閱讀這種小人物的故事~
  
  先講一下Tony Parker的書，如果你喜歡讀旅遊文學，英國有一間出版社Eland Books專門出版旅遊文學，他們很多作品都有翻譯成繁中版，由馬可孛羅出版社推出，之前在研究travel writing時看到一本《Lighthouse》，作者就是Tony Parker，這位歷史學家關注的族群真的是太吸引人，或者該說太旁門左道，讓人好奇想一探究竟。他專門採訪社會上最邊緣的族群，例如燈塔守望者、罪犯、窮鄉僻壤的居民等，他想要捕捉這些邊緣人的樣貌，並好奇他們內心的感受、看待人生的態度、面對的生活困境…種種議題。
  
  他覺得身為一位歷史學家，他有責任親自前往現場採訪、觀察、體會這些族群的真實面貌，並將他們完整的保存於文本中，彌補傳統歷史學的缺憾。以燈塔守望者為例，究竟是什麼原因讓這些人以此為業? 他們怎麼會選擇這樣一種單調又乏味的工作? 每次上崗都要離開家人數個月，還要跟另外兩個陌生人擠在一座狹窄的燈塔中生活? 這本書出版於1976年，當時受訪者講了許多發人深省的對話，他們通常都是主流價值觀中的魯蛇，找不到”體面的”工作，只好來幹這種”屎缺”，沒想到一做下去，有些人反而愛上這份與世隔絕的工作，不用面對世俗的勾心鬥角，汲汲營營於功名利祿，他們因為隔絕於社會，每次值班的三個夥伴通常會產生密切的羈絆，在狂風肆虐又波濤洶湧的礁岩上，三個人產生一種奇特的親密感，彼此賴以為生，他們精神上成為單一個體，這種關係正是他們在正常社會情境底下所渴望卻無法獲得的精神狀態。
  
  在外人眼中的邊緣份子，他們守著自己的一畝三分地，安安靜靜地度過一生，偶爾感到心滿意足。他們還說這是一份很適合當作終身志業的工作，總得有人照料燈塔才能給予沿岸航行的船隻一盞明燈指引。多麼浪漫不是嗎? 不過科技的發展最終取代人力，燈塔自動化了，這份職業也消失了。國外書評稱讚Tony Parker的書不僅記錄沒落的族群，更能觸動人心，讓讀者對於人性有更深層的認識。
  
  (2)惡托邦
  最近幾年惡托邦(亦稱為反烏托邦、敵托邦)蔚為風潮，從影視到文學作品，人們絞盡腦汁發明出各式各樣的惡托邦。最知名的當屬喬治歐威爾《1984》中的大洋國，老大哥在看著你! 其他知名的例子包含《使女的故事》、《飢餓遊戲》、《魷魚遊戲》等，如果你是科幻小說迷，應該對惡托邦相當熟悉，因為好看的科幻小說基本上都發生在一個完美的惡托邦，惡托邦能夠帶出人類最黑暗的一面，產生高強度的劇情張力，所以惡托邦的題材越來越流行。
  
  有興趣的人可以去研究一下短篇科幻小說的選集(sci-fi anthology)，這種科幻選集在歐美很常見，就是把一些同類型的短篇故事集結成一本書出版，這個領域最權威的編輯叫做John Joseph Adams，這位老兄的品味很獨特，他專門挑選這種惡托邦的故事集結成冊出版，你可以上Amazon去瀏覽一下，我買過幾本他編的書，其中一本叫《Brave New Worlds (Dystopian Stories)》，裡面收錄多篇反烏托邦的故事，且這些故事的作者皆鼎鼎大名，包含尼爾蓋曼這種大作家，所以他選的作品都有一定的可讀性。
  
  在既定印象中，當提及反烏托邦，一般人應該馬上會想到一個極權政府壓迫勞動者的畫面。但這位編輯在序言中探討反��托邦時，他特別強調反烏托邦的多元面向，dystopia不一定是黑暗殘酷的社會，就算是光鮮亮麗的和諧社會，在某些人眼中也是另一種dystopia，例如一個只重視娛樂和消費的社會，所有人瘋狂的滿足各種慾望，被無上限的快樂主義主宰，導致精神上的空洞與匱乏，並陷入惡性循環，這也可視為一種反烏托邦的樣態，而且跟我們的現實生活挺類似的。閱讀反烏托邦的故事，很適合用來自我反思，到底自己想要追尋的人生意義為何? (我可能還要再多讀一些哈哈)
  
  (3)核輻射
  我還記得十年前玩Fallout 3時走出Vault 101時看著廢土時那種興奮感，核戰之後的世界，華盛頓已成被輻射污染的廢土。對了~上面John Joseph Adams也有編一系列叫做Wastelands的合集喔! 如果你喜歡Fallout的世界設定，真的該去研究一下這位編輯老兄獨到的品味。關於核輻射，應該許多人對這種肉眼不可見卻充滿殺傷力的東西存在一股奇妙的情緒吧? 至少我是這樣啦，覺得它是一種具有魔力的神奇能量，耳邊響起蓋革計數器的滋滋聲，殺人於無形，若暴露其中，將產生各種恐怖的後遺症，甚至有突變的恐懼。
  
  核輻射也是流行文化中不可或缺的元素之一。二次大戰後，世界秩序由美蘇兩強權對峙，冷戰投射了核子戰爭的漫長陰影，軍事戰略上的「相互保證毀滅」讓雙方維持一種恐怖平衡，據說好幾次意外，只要某位指揮官決心按下紅色按鈕，我們可能如今只能活在地堡裡，如同《羊毛記》裡的世界一般。我出生的那一年剛好蘇聯解體，所以我對冷戰時代的認識皆來自電玩、電影和書籍。如今30年過去，歐美知識界提起蘇聯，竟然會莫名產生一種懷舊感(nostalgia)，這也是閱讀《惡托邦記》給我的感覺，報導文學是一種很迷人的體裁，優秀的作家可以讓讀者透過文字穿梭於不同的歷史時空，把空間和時間交融，彷彿處於現場，本書作者凱特．布朗教授的文筆極佳，翻譯也極佳，閱讀這本書是純粹智識上的享受，她對於「地方」的論述相當精采，或許會改變往後你看待地景的觀點。
  
  (4)邊緣
  布朗教授在YT上有關於本書的演講，片名同書名《Dispatches from Dystopia》，演講內容就是本書的精要，搭配彩色投影片，若沒時間讀書，可以去看一下喔! 教授是一位很有個人魅力的學者。她目前是麻省理工學院的科學史教授(之前在馬里蘭大學執教，作者簡介可能要更新一下~)，獲獎無數的她是一位非常優秀的歷史學家。她的研究領域非常有趣又偏門，她是蘇聯的專家，所以對前蘇聯共和國(former Soviet Bloc)也有深度的認識，其中烏克蘭、哈薩克似乎是她進行最多田野調查的地點。最近這幾個禮拜俄羅斯似乎又要進攻烏克蘭了，前蘇聯集團內部的恩怨情仇真的是糾葛不清。
  
  蘇聯當年跟美國的核武競賽對雙方都產生嚴重的後遺症。1986年車諾比核電廠爆炸讓核子幽靈從此盤旋在世人心中。核子技術在二戰後才逐漸成熟，人類也花了數十年的時間才慢慢了解輻射的陰暗面。在這個過程中，人類跟輻射的互動猶如曖昧的男女，時而親密，時而疏遠，許多普通百姓在不知情的情況下被捲進來，在身體及心靈上的都留下了深刻卻不可見的印記。布朗教授醉心於追尋這些縹緲的烙印，花了二十幾年的學術生涯，試圖建構歷史、科學、科技如何形塑當代的大規模災難，她親自前往當代廢土，嘗試理解生命政治(bio-politics)在這種語境下的意義。簡而言之，就是”個體生命如何被權力及政體所塑造”，這些被歷史遺忘的無語者，在核輻射的現場被銷聲匿跡，她想要重新把這群人帶回歷史學的視域中，不能讓這群人就此被遺忘，所以她目前寫的作品都跟這些生活在核子惡托邦的邊緣者息息相關。
  
  (5)現場
  教授成長於美國中部的伊利諾州埃爾金小鎮，這個小鎮跟其他處於鐵銹帶的美國小鎮一樣，在20世紀中葉以後逐漸產業外移，人口流失，漸漸沒落。她在這種環境底下成長，親眼見證繁華落盡後的荒涼，儘管死氣沉沉，但依稀仍有一絲絲殘破的美感，20世紀後期依然陸陸續續有來自各國的移民遷移至此，賦予小鎮一種新生的氣息。這本書充滿此類”絕處逢生”的感受，看似已經死去的地方，若細心檢視，就會發現微微閃爍的希望。有趣的是，教授把這種地方稱為Rustalgia，銹跡斑斑的懷舊感。
  
  教授的寫作風格跟正統的歷史書寫也不太一樣，她把田野調查、調查報導、回憶錄、傳記、學術寫作、文學批評揉合在一起，所以讀起來非常奇妙! 一般歷史著作都是採用第三人稱的上帝視角平鋪直敘的講述歷史，這也是歷史學界的共識��寫作者必須將自身抽離敘述，對於研究的客體不能投射情感。教授對此頗有微詞，她固然認同主流的歷史寫作風格，因為這種寫法比較嚴謹，能賦予作者”權威"，彷彿上帝一般的存在，全知地綜觀全局。但教授批評這種寫法掩飾了作者本身的侷限性，每一個歷史學家都有知識上的侷限，任何人的寫作都有一定程度上的主觀性，不可能達到所謂的超然客觀。她獨排眾議用第一人稱視角完成她的博士論文，並引發學界的譁然及批評，她也欣然接受。
  
  她認為在作品中，不能故意忽略寫作者這個”我”，”我”必須置身於現場，並且對研究對象投入感情，才算真正有意義的歷史。她對於惡托邦的研究也奠基於此，她把”地方”當作一個有生命的個體，用傳記的形式記錄地方的情緒及感情，所以她的文章深具感染力，讀起來很有共鳴。教授也謙虛的自我反思，她知道自己這種寫作方式也有缺陷，若你本身也熱愛寫作，這本書也能提供另類的寫作啟示。例如目前主流的影評、樂評、書評等評論性質的文章，通常也都鼓勵將寫作者自身抽離，盡量純論述或摘要即可，不然會顯得挺突兀又尷尬甚至油膩，布朗教授的觀點蠻值得寫作者參考一番。(小弟也要面壁思過一下XD)
  
  書中第三章是教授前往車諾比地區參訪的紀錄。她當初在網路上看見一個部落格，從照片中判斷，博主是一位年輕的正妹，她戴著厚重的安全帽，騎著重機，上傳拍攝的照片(廢棄的摩天輪、來不及撤走的衣服、散落在地上的書籍)，並寫下文字記錄車諾比核災後的模樣。她在自我介紹中寫道，她的爸爸是一位烏克蘭的核物理學家，所以她有權限能毫無阻攔在車諾比禁區任意探險。這種形象太過浪漫，她的部落格吸引了上百萬人點閱，布朗教授也為之深深著迷。沒想到後來被揭穿這是一場騙局，照片是從書本上複製過來，至於她戴著安全帽的畫面，竟然是因為太多人點閱了，她覺得自己必須親自走訪一趟車諾比才行~所以報名參加一天的旅行團，拿著一頂安全帽到現場拍幾張照，導遊小姐也覺得莫名其妙XD。巧合的是，當布朗教授參加旅行團時，正好遇上同一位導遊小姐，導遊就帶教授去看博主拍攝照片的現場，原來衣服是博主掛上去的，根本不是1986年的遺跡。教授覺得很有趣，因為很多歷史研究都是在安全又跟外界隔離的檔案室進行，文本中的歷史紀錄經過前人細心篩選及分類，具有高度的參考價值，但有許���文本上看不見的東西或許得親臨現場才能略知一二吧。
  
  關於”現場”這個概念，三年前美國最偉大的傳記作家之一Robert A. Caro有寫過一本書《Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing》，他同時也是一位記者，重點來了! 他一輩子就寫六本書，其中五本是美國總統詹森的傳記，每一本都超過一千頁，第五本還在寫作中，而他已經86歲了。他數度獲得普立茲獎最佳傳記等殊榮，並以廣泛的研究著稱。他超級誇張，為了感受詹森總統小時候成長的”真實感受”，他竟然搬去偏鄉住好幾年，只為了身處現場，並且每隔幾年就會重新造訪，以求最真實的現場體驗! 他的這本創作回憶錄根本是寫作者的聖經，真的很驚人吼! 你會花一輩子只為了寫一個人的傳記嗎? 他這種執著於寫作的真實表述，令人敬佩不已~
  
  Dispatches from Dystopia，發自未忘之地的快電報導，《惡托邦記》是一本令人難以忘懷的知性讀本，推薦給喜歡歷史的讀者~
• 
  R.J. Gilmour

  A really good book from historian Kate Brown that looks at how space and place can be historicized.
  
  "The premise of this book is that traveling can be a form of negotiation, an unraveling of certainties and convictions and a reassembling of the past, aided by strangers who generously open their doors to reveal histories that are in play, contingent, and subjective.
  
  Each chapter of this book uses a particular place to explore the histories of communities and territories that have been silenced, broken, or contaminated. In telling these stories I narrate the history of places, their making and unmaking, and of the people who remain in the landscapes that are left behind...
  
  The core idea of what has been called the "spatial turn", by contrast, has been to explore how spatial arrangements shape the human, natural, and animal worlds, and do so in ways that are harder to see than the effects of published laws, market transactions, or social norms, because people often take spatial organization to part of the natural (or given) world. The motivation of this book, then, is to treat places as sources that are as rich, important, erratic, and unreliable as material that comes from archives filled with cataloged files." 2
  
  "As I go about the delicate business of stitching together narratives of territories that have been violently taken apart, I run into all kinds of problems. Place and the people in them tell many different, conflicting stories about the past. I puzzle over how to tell such multifocal or polyphonic stories yet still retain narrative form. Worse, what if there are no voices?" 3
  
  "Visibility," Bruno Latour writes, "is the consequence of lots of opaque and "invisible" work."5
  
  "Since the 1960s, historians have worked to uncover and present in their work voices long absent from national histories. New social histories emerged in American and European academies just after the riots of the sixties, when the rage of the people who had long been missing and unaccounted for appeared on city streets as if out of nowhere and went critical, surprising those who had done the overlooking. Since that time, historians of labor, social, and environmental history, alongside historians of ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities, have penned whole new communities, movements, and identities into being."9
  
  "What is wrong in acknowledging being there? I am confused by the notion that referring to oneself in scholarly writing is unprofessional or trivial or renders one's work tautological-"something we don't do". This question has long nagged me: Why, in disciplines that aspire to verifiable truth, do scholars sustain the fiction, when researching and writing, that they are not there?" 11
  
  "Being detached translates grammatically into being disembodies ("one would think...") or multisided ("we know that...") Donna Haraway calls the scholarly practice of "seeing everything from nowhere" the "god trick". This narrative mode glosses over the fact that the writer, like everyone else, is rooted in a time and place, which greatly constrains what the researcher can see and how he or she sees it." 11
  
  "Talking to Touishi, I learned that the dispossessed can become possessed-haunted by the unbound fragments of their past, which greatly hinder getting on with life in the present tense." 15
  
  "Obviously, I think not. I am interested in how spatial practices work to snare people into silence, invisibility, and diagnoses of menace and madness. The reverse is also true. I want to know how, by means of spatial arrangements, humans assemble knowledge and possibility, credibility, visibility, and sanity."17
  
  "Industrial hygiensists did not determine occupational illness based on workers' health complaints. Rather they fixed on measurements of toxins in the factory environment that could be linked to harmful psychological developments." 70
  
  "American researchers were looking for cause and effect: singular radioactive isotopes assaulting singular bodily organs to produces stand-alone diseases. It was important in the United States for doctors and lawyers to be able to prove in court that a certain agent (and not others) caused bodily harm."72
  
  "A failure to see bodies and to use them as archival maps of exposure helps explain the emphasis on cures, not the environmental causes, of a growing number of debilitating and deadly diseases." 74
  
  "Invisibility takes a lot of work." 75
  
  "If that is so, then the decades of fixing on political systems and ideology appear in retrospect as a prolonged exercise in self-definition. Neither country could have existed without the other, because each country used its communist/capitalist nemesis as a self-justifying point of departure; each country projected a mirror image of the other in order to define and produce itself so as to rule." 103
  
  "James C. Scott understands the grid as a was to simplify the opaque and complex quality of indigenous social practices so as to enhance centralized power at the cost of local rule. In short, the grid can serve as an apparatus for conquest, as a way to dominate space." 103-104
  
  "In fact, the cities born during this century gave new meaning to nomadism by ambling across the flat plains wherever transportation routes wandered, with nothing to stop them but sheer loneliness.
  
  In both countries, as a result, conquest meant consumption: the newcomers ingested-in coal, copper, wheat, sugar beets, ore-the territories they desired." 105
  
  "Both Soviet and American proselytizers emphasize origins. What had been empty was filled in, the barren made green, the primitive sophisticated. Europeans arrived, found places empty of history and gave them a beginning, and thus meaning. And they did it, the writers stress, quickly." 110
  
  "What most failed to mention was that the land was not empty but emptied." 112
  
  "In turn, rooting nomads and transforming the landscape would make it hard to remember, "a time," as David Rollison puts it, "When the land was anything other than a commodity to be converted to cash." 113-114
  
  "America's restless, feverish passion for quick results has kicked up a nostalgia for a past slowed under to make room for an ever-receding future." 125
  
  "As industrial space gridded the landscape, populations of migrants and prisoners were segmented as well, by class and ethnicity." 128
  
  "The forces that hammered Poles and other immigrant groups into discrete ethnic enclaves belonged to the industrial age. Between 1880 and 1920 in the United States, the way people worked and produced goods altered significantly, which in turn influenced how people lived and where. Corporate bureaucracies organized production from the top down. As production decisions moved up a lengthening hierarchy, skilled labourers were replaced by foreman supervising unskilled workers. Relations between foremen and workers sold into mutual aggression as the foremen were pressed to continually increase production, and in so doing threatened workers with dismissal and pay cuts." 130
  
• 
  Kate

  The myths of the Chernobyl zone, things left behind in the Panama Hotel in Seattle, the odd similarities between Billings, Montana and a prison camp town in Kazakhstan...
  
  Brown draws meaning from the landscapes of modernity in ruins, traveling through the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. while meditating on the nature of historical research. She takes a first-person approach, incorporating her emotional reactions to different sites and describing her encounters with random people -- all in an attempt to break down the usual disembodied voice of scholarly authority. The vibe is more like anthropology than straight-up history.
  
  This is the kind of book I imagined I would write, back when I was an urban history person. I appreciated Brown's attention to material culture and the kinds of sources that aren't filed neatly in archival folders.
• 
  Rosanna

  I really enjoyed this book, felt challenged and intrigued by it. It was one of the books that I never would have come across without my listmaking and I'm glad it showed up whereever it did.
  
  The Panama Hotel essay, about the hotel where many Japanese stored items when sent to internment camps at WWII, was brilliant, and of course evocative of the current moment: "The Kampkook stove tells the story of a failed American contract. Work hard, save, keep out of trouble, and you too can have the middle class pleasures owed to every industrious American: a car, vacations in nature zones, camping equipment, and sturdy wool coats with aristocratic fur collars. The Japanese Americans whose possessions ended up in the basement of the Panama hotel had worked hard, saved, and purchased goods that promised assimiliations and normality, but then the war came (as it would). . .
  
  "Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhastan and Montana are Nearly the Same Place" also brilliant. It suggests that "the physical experience of industrial labor differs little whether under capitalism or communism." Makes one step back and think. Stepping back is such a good thing these days.
• 
  Bryce Van Vleet

  This was a much more interesting concept than it was a final product. I really enjoyed the journey Brown took us on and her prose was generally really lovely and interesting. But I would have liked to see... I don't know - more? I just felt such an amazing concept fell a little flat. Perhaps, though, this was a result of me hyping myself up too much for it.
  
  I do think this was a good book, and I would happily recommend it to anyone interested in history or urban development. I just wish I could have seen a little more.
• 
  Catherine

  I just finished reading, Cover, by Mendelsund. This book's cover definitely reflects the contents and not in a good way. On the cover, there is a little map of Buffalo, Cleveland, Aliquippa and Akron. I am wondering why this drawing because several of the locations are not even mentioned. Also, the person on the motorcycle with Kiev?? when this takes place in Chernobyl. This aside, I had trouble piecing together her purpose. I totally understand history of place, but her research seemed all over the place and to move from one topic to another within a chapter barely touching the surface of the places she visited. I liked three pieces, Panama Hotel in Seattle (Japanese internment), Chernobyl Zone (vacated city of Pripyat) and Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk (Ozersk, a city of 90,000 not even on a map). The classification and data around CRS, Chronic Radiation Syndrome, and the changes with American intervention after 1989 were fascinating.
• 
  Ben

  Stories of downtrodden places, some better known (Chernobyl, Japanese internment camps in the northwest, the American Rust Belt) and some less so (numerous faded industrial cities in Kazakhstan and Ukraine; Billings, MT of all places), interwoven with meditations on the historian's role in relating history and the way her own biography interacts with the stories of those places. Interviews with people who went through Stalin's forced immigration and labor camps were valuable and enriching; comparisons of how 19th-century capitalists and 20th-century Communists subjugated workers with forced relocation and economic dependence were sharp and illuminating, and the story of infiltrating an Orthodox Rosh Hoshanna festival mixed journalistic chutzpah with a historian's cultural sensitivity.
• 
  Jued

  I found this book unusual because rather than going into depth on any one topic, I learned more about research methods, inserting the researcher into a written history, and biography of a place.