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Thepeoplehistory.com

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American Culture in the 1990's.

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From 1990 to 1999, the median American household income grew by 10 percent; since 2000 it's shrunk by nearly 9 percent. The poverty rate peaked at over 15 percent in 1993, then fell to nearly 11 percent in 2000, more or less its postwar low. During the '90s, stocks quadrupled in value - the Dow Jones industrial average increased by 309 percent. You could still buy a beautiful Brooklyn townhouse for $500,000 or less. And so on.

By the end of the decade, in fact, there was so much good news - a federal budget surplus, dramatic reductions in violent crime (the murder rate in the United States declined by 41 percent) and in deaths from H.I.V./AIDS - that each astounding new achievement didn't quite register as miraculous. After all, the decade had begun with a fantastically joyful and previously unimaginable development: The Soviet empire collapsed, global nuclear Armageddon ceased to be a thing that worried anyone very much, and the nations of Eastern Europe were mostly unchained.

A tide of progress and good sense seemed to be sweeping the whole world. According to the annual count by Freedom House, the tally of the world's free countries climbed from 65 at the beginning of the decade to 85 at the end. Since then, the total number of certified-free countries has increased by only four.

Between 1990 and 1994 South Africa dismantled apartheid surprisingly peacefully. With the Oslo Accords, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization had come together at last to negotiate a framework for coexistence and eventual peace. The civil wars in the former Yugoslavia ended and an enduring peace was restored. China became normal, reforming its economy, tripling its gross domestic product and easing its way into the world order.

During the '90s, the only American-led war in the Middle East was the one that drove Saddam Hussein's invading army out of Kuwait with a ground campaign that lasted a mere 100 hours.

Peace, prosperity, order - and American culture was vibrant and healthy as well. There were both shockingly excellent versions of what had come before and distinctly new, original forms. Wasn't the release of Nirvana's "Nevermind," in 1991, pretty much the last time a new rock 'n' roll band truly, deeply mattered, the way rock 'n' roll did in the '60s and '70s? Wasn't hip-hop, which achieved its mass-market breakthrough and dominance in the '90s, the last genuinely new and consequential invention of American pop culture?

What is the most remarkably successful literary creation of the last several decades? The Harry Potter novels, the first three of which appeared in the '90s. Supertalented literary youngsters appeared - David Foster Wallace ("Infinite Jest"), Donna Tartt ("The Secret History"), Jonathan Lethem ("Motherless Brooklyn") and Dave Eggers (McSweeney's). And supertalented literary geezers - Philip Roth ("American Pastoral"), John Updike ("Rabbit at Rest"), Alice Munro ("The Love of a Good Woman"), Don DeLillo ("Underworld") - produced some of their best and most successful work as well.

The quality of television radically improved. "Seinfeld" and " The Simpsons " had their premieres in 1989, and in the '90s they blew up, along with "Friends" and "NYPD Blue" - all of them broadcast network series, none of them reality shows. HBO, before the '90s a channel for movies, boxing and soft-core porn, decided to swing for the fences. First with "The Larry Sanders Show" and then with "The Sopranos," it proved that episodic television could accommodate major ambition and actual brilliance, ushering in an enduring new (cable) TV era.

In feature films, it was the decade of "Pulp Fiction" and the indie movement, thanks to which idiosyncratic, more-commercial-than-art-house masterpieces like those by Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and Richard Linklater became plausible. It was also the decade in which traditional Disney animation came back from the dead and in which Pixar, with the first two "Toy Story" movies, reinvented the form magnificently.

THE digital age, of course, got fully underway in the '90s. At the beginning of the decade almost none of us had heard of the web, and we didn't have browsers, search engines, digital cellphone networks, fully 3-D games or affordable and powerful laptops. By the end of the decade we had them all. Steve Jobs returned to Apple and conjured its rebirth.

And it was just the right amount of technology. By the end of the decade we all had cellphones, but not smartphones; we were not overconnected or tyrannized by our devices. Social media had not yet made social life both manically nonstop and attenuated. The digital revolution hadn't brutally "disrupted" whole economic sectors and made their work forces permanently insecure. Recorded music sales nearly doubled during the decade. Newspapers and magazines were thriving. Even Y2K, our terrifying end-of-the-millennium technological comeuppance, was a nonevent.

Indeed, the '90s were a decade of catastrophes that didn't happen. The Clinton tax increases did not trigger a recession. Welfare reform did not ravage the poor. Compared with Sandy, every hurricane that touched New York - Bob! Bertha! Danny! Dennis! Floyd! - was a dud.

Were there real problems in the '90s? Of course. But they weren't obvious, so ... we were blissfully ignorant! Almost none of us were suitably alarmed by carbon emissions and the warming planet. According to a 1995 article in this newspaper about climate change, "most scientists say the amount of warming so far, about one degree Fahrenheit in the last century, is still too small to be distinguished from the climate system's natural fluctuations." So why worry?

When the House and Senate passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities and President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, doing away with the firewalls between investment banks and commercial banks, the change seemed inevitable, sensible, modern - not a precursor of the 2008 Wall Street crash. When a jihadist truck bomb detonated in the parking garage below the north tower of the World Trade Center in 1993, we were alarmed only briefly, figuring it for a crazy one-off rather than a first strike in a long struggle.

Americans have never much liked paying attention to foreign countries and their problems (see Rwanda, 1994), so the decade between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the war on terror was very much our cup of tea.

No: I mean our cup of coffee. You can't talk about the '90s without talking about the sudden availability of excellent coffee - espresso in Idaho! - all over America. This was thanks to Starbucks, of course, which went from nearly 100 outlets in the United States at the start of the decade to 2,000 at the end. But as it goes with so many good things in America - easier credit and financial innovation and electronic connection and all the rest - that just wasn't enough.

Today there are more than 13,000 Starbucks in the United States. And each of them, to my eye, looks exactly as it did when the rollout began - 13,000 ubiquitous and faintly melancholic time-capsule museums of the last best American decade.

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Opinion | The Best Decade Ever? The 1990s, Obviously

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From 1990 to 1999, the median American household income grew by 10 percent; since 2000 it's shrunk by nearly 9 percent. The poverty rate peaked at over 15 percent in 1993, then fell to nearly 11 percent in 2000, more or less its postwar low.

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Lucy and Joe Lourenco emigrated from Portugal in 1984 as a newly married couple; they were only 19 and 24 years old. They spent the first few years of their life in America working in California, saving all the money they could. Idaho seemed like the perfect place to start a farm, so they moved to Emmett in 1992. "We started with 40 cows and barely made enough money to eat," Lucy says. "But it's a beautiful business if you love the animals."

Lucy has always had a gift with the cows. Around the time their first son was born, the dairy's calves began to get sick, and Joe couldn't help them. They hired a nanny so that Lucy could help nurse the calves back to health. Many times, a cow would begin birthing in the middle of the night, prompting Lucy to pull her boots on over her pajamas and head outside. That's why she keeps their bedroom window open a crack.

Joe prefers working in their corn and wheat fields: He's the dreamer, Lucy says, the one with vision. "Reading and writing is not his thing, but he can see and do what he has a vision for." Lucy handles the bookkeeping and finances and makes sure they have money saved for the bad years. "When you start with nothing and build up from nothing, you don't want to lose it or give it away."

But now, Lucy and Joe are facing an unknown future, as neither of their two sons has expressed any interest in taking over the dairy farm someday. "Younger people don't want it because the money isn't there," she says. "Younger people want fancy, higher -paying jobs."

In the 1930s, the United States was home to 6.3 million farms; today, there are approximately 2.2 million, and fewer every day. The average age of today's farmer or rancher is 59 years old, and many are retiring without a successor, as their children don't want - or can't afford - to take over the family business. Thus, as farms' inheritors increasingly abandon the farm, a vacuum of stewardship opens up, leaving many wondering who, or what, will take their place.

Toward Freer Markets and More Local Control

Small family farms were traditionally tied to the good of their communities and their environment: Their smallness and generational longevity helped foster communal rapport, accountability, and stewardship. But today, formerly vibrant rural communities are slowly turning into ghost towns as industrialized farms corrode the traditional relation of commerce and community that surrounded their smaller counterparts. Farmers are motivated to "get big or get out," as President Nixon's secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, said in 1973, urging farmers to buy up their neighbors' lands, and replace laborers with tractors. Without the traditional cycles of employment and production that small farms fostered, rural communities are falling apart.

Formerly vibrant rural communities are slowly turning into ghost towns as industrialized farms corrode the traditional relation of commerce and community.

Many writers who cover food production - such as Michael Pollan, author of the bestselling book The Omnivore's Dilemma - blame the perpetuation of such circumstances on capitalism itself, arguing that the U.S. economic system enables big businesses to triumph through corruption and cruelty. But this fails to address the huge surge in consumer demand for sustainable, human-scale agricultural practices. If the market were truly a "free" one, wouldn't it respond to this demand? Trends such as "locavorism" and the increasing number of farmers' markets nationwide indicate some change, but the system is still rewarding practices that more and more consumers dislike.

To find an advocate for both sustainable agriculture and the free market, look no further than famous farmer and author Joel Salatin. Salatin's parents settled in southern Virginia in 1961, buying up severely eroded farmland that they and their son have worked steadily to restore. He staunchly advocates organic, diversified agriculture, free of pesticides and chemicals. Salatin's book Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal details the many ways that the federal government saddles farmers with excess paperwork, regulations, and bureaucracy. He thinks this burden is, at least in part, facilitated by big agricultural producers who have the staff and funds to meet heavy regulatory demands. Big farms set high barriers of entry for small ones, making it difficult for operations such as Salatin's to compete.

Whether it's subsidies, crop insurance, federal regulations, or even conservation programs, says Salatin, there is often a "prejudice against scale." In a centralized system of regulation and control, diversity makes standards more difficult to enforce. But to dispense with variation is not just detrimental to land, animals, and community; Salatin also believes it hampers new farmers, because "innovation starts embryonically, creation starts small."

Federal insurance programs traditionally come in two forms: yield and revenue insurance. The USDA's Risk Management Agency (RMA) formulates insurance policies, sets premium rates, and subsidizes the cost for farmers and insurance providers. But big businesses often receive larger subsidies, rewarding powerful and politically connected farming operations over small family farms. "There have been a series of policy decisions at the federal level that have greatly influenced where we are today - where farms are larger, there are fewer family farms, and fewer vibrant rural communities," Paul Wolfe of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition told me.

One particularly bad culprit is the harvest price option (HPO) crop-insurance policy. While traditional crop insurance protects farmers from catastrophic losses, those who can afford higher premiums buy an HPO policy. Traditional crop insurance pays farmers when the price at harvest is less than projected prices at planting. But HPO policies guarantee that farmers will be paid either the projected price at planting time, or the market price at harvest - whichever is higher. "This product goes above and beyond the definition of a safety net," wrote the R Street Institute, a libertarian think tank, in a letter to Congress last year. "It is the crop insurance equivalent of your auto insurer surprising you with a new Cadillac Escalade after you've totaled your Toyota Corolla."

Craig Cox, the senior vice president for agriculture resources at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), says the HPO is less an insurance policy than a price support. "The odds are very high they're going to make money," says Cox. "The rate of return in some instances was 300 or 400 percent. With crop insurance, we're subsidizing so much normal business risk, you can make decisions to expand, buy, or rent more land, without having to worry about risk that would normally make you think twice, or make you diversify your crops."

Those who oppose the Farm Bill (of which the HPO is one component) cross party lines, forming unexpected partnerships. The EWG joins libertarian-leaning groups such as The R Street Institute and Taxpayers for Common Sense in opposing current agricultural policies. Their reasons are ecological, economic, and political: Crop insurance is bad for the land and also bad for the taxpayer. In 2012, the harvest price option boosted payouts to corn and soybean farmers by $6 billion - money that comes from the federal government and thus from the pockets of average citizens. "The overwhelming cost is borne by us," says Joshua Sewell, a policy analyst for Taxpayers for Common Sense. "We also bear the cost of the crop-insurance companies, as well as the cost of loss when it occurs. It's a triangle of waste."

Catherine Cochran, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, acknowledged that because of the way USDA programs function, "more funds go to larger farms," and perceptions of a disparity in coverage "may not be totally false." However, she also pointed to efforts the department is making to reach out to smaller growers, such as their microloan initiative and "Whole Farm Revenue Protection" (WFRP), a measure introduced in the 2014 Farm Bill. In contrast to more conventional crop-insurance policies, WFRP offers greater security to smaller, diversified farm producers.

This year, President Obama proposed $9 billion in cuts to the USDA budget - cuts that focus in on crop-insurance programs such as the HPO policy. It's impossible for the budget to entirely eliminate the Harvest Price Option plan, but Obama's proposed cuts would drastically trim the federal funds that undergird it. In a joint press release, the R Street Institute and National Taxpayers Union joined Friends of the Earth U.S. and the EWG in applauding these budget cuts.

Many libertarian-leaning Americans are also advocating for what they call "local food freedom" as a way to free up the connection between farmer and consumer. The Wyoming Food Freedom Act is one example of this. Signed into law last March, it fights for the deregulation of locally produced foods. It exempts local sales from government licensure, permitting, certification, inspection, packaging, and labeling requirements, and applies to farmers' markets as well as on-site stores at farms.

Salatin and other "food freedom" advocates argue that, while federal oversight is an expensive means of accountability, local policing - in which consumers visit, interact with, and personally inspect the farms where they procure their food - is a more efficient system, policed without government cost and reinforced by self-interest. While it cannot replace interstate commerce and regulation, it can provide an alternative to them and open up opportunities for small growers to succeed.

Passing the Family Farm to the Next Generation

But financial and regulatory challenges aren't the only things driving farmers' children off the land. While farming was once considered important and even prestigious work, today "there's a cultural condescension toward farmers," Salatin says. Many believe farming is blue-collar and unintellectual. "When my high-school counselor found out I wanted to be a farmer, I thought she'd have an apoplectic seizure," Salatin recalls. "Farming is seen as what you do if you can't do anything else."

'When my high-school counselor found out I wanted to be a farmer, I thought she'd have an apoplectic seizure.'
-Joel Salatin

Despite the negative stereotypes, Salatin's interns and apprentices are stepping out onto the farm. One of his current interns worked ten years for a Fortune 500 company, until he "got tired of computers." Farming is something the intern always wanted to do, Salatin says, but society, his family, and academia all conveyed the message that he shouldn't, or couldn't. "These are the stewards of our air, soil, water, food - isn't it important that we have our best and brightest out here?" Salatin asks.

Marie Bowers is one such person: a bright college graduate who decided to return to her family farm and work with her father. She was raised on a six-generation grass farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where her family grows ryegrass and fescue. "I do a lot of political activities," she says. "When I told someone who does similar stuff that I was heading back to the farm, they said it was a waste of my potential."

But Bowers loves everything about her family farm: driving tractors, puzzling over the crops, putting in the hours and the physical labor. "If I don't continue [the farm], I don't know who would, and I would hate to see something my family has worked so hard be taken over," she says.

When land was a highly coveted commodity and land ownership conferred a degree of prestige, most farmers' children could see the value in carrying on their parents' work. But today, the prestige of farming has diminished, and children are no longer expected or encouraged to follow in their parents' footsteps.

This is the dilemma the Lucy Lourenco and her husband, Joe, now confront: Their sons are proud of their parents, she says, but "they aren't driven." She wonders whether working for another farmer might have helped her sons see the value and dignity in farm work, but she also believes the culture has offered her sons different incentives. They aspire to an ease of life that never appealed to her or Joe. "I walk to the barn; they take the four-wheeler," she says. "They'll help out on the farm but only because they have to - not because they care for it." There are still young people like Marie Bowers who are interested in farming despite its difficulties. But there are fewer such people than there were 20 or 50 years ago, thanks to the physical strains of the job, a lack of financial incentives, and widespread cultural prejudices.

Yet as farmers' children vacate the family farm, other young people across the U.S. are stepping in to fill the void: Eric Hansen, a policy analyst for the National Young Farmers Coalition, has seen their passion firsthand. His organization started in 2010, with a vision to help these young people start their careers in agriculture.

For many of the farmers with whom Hansen works, procuring land is the biggest challenge: A March 2016 study by Iowa State University economics professor Mike Duffy demonstrates that crop insurance has hiked up the price of farmland substantially, with farmland appraisal values rising 8.5 percent per year between 2006 and 2015, compared with 7.2 percent per year between 2001 and 2015. This can hurt both small farm owners and farmers renting their land: "When growers have to pay more for land because crop insurance raises the rental rates they pay, their overall costs of doing business increase," Anne Weir, a senior analyst at EWG, wrote this spring. "Some growers are approaching the point where they will no longer break even."

But a lot of these young farmers need a helping hand: Unable to inherit land, they need to find acreage at a good price, from landowners who share their vision and are willing to support them. This is where agricultural partnership or "matchmaking" services are stepping in. Some are as simple as a "land link" - connecting property owners with new farmers. Other matchmaking efforts, however, are more complicated, bringing together an elderly, retiring farmer, and an aspiring, young farmer in a sort of geographical and vocational marriage.

Salatin talked with me about a couple such services: Eager Farmer is an advertising site for farmers and landowners, as well as for potential farm apprentices, interns, and managers. The grassroots organization Greenhorns offers a similar linking service, as does the National Young Farmers Coalition. Hansen notes that some of the Coalition's land links have been more successful than others. "You aren't just passing on an asset," he says. "It's a business, a big piece of your identity. People want to make sure the places they're passing on will be valued and taken care of and managed properly."

People like the Lourencos are well aware of the difficulties, unknowns, and grueling work farming requires. They don't have visions of grandeur about it. But can they work with the younger generation in passing along this legacy? This is what a family farm traditionally represents: the preservation of tradition, the handing down of the land and its stewardship from one generation to another. Though the generational chain has loosened and even broken, perhaps land links can make the bonds strong again.

Hansen notes that many of the young farmers with whom he works aspire to hand down their farms to their children. They want to continue the tradition of family farming, if they're able, and this is what he hopes to help them do: "A farm should be a place where you can raise a family, where you have the income you need, where you can pass down to the next generation."

-​ Gracy Olmstead is a senior writer for the American Conservative, a senior contributor for the Federalist, and the Thursday editor of BRIGHT, a weekly newsletter for women. This project was supported by the Fund for American Studies' Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program.

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Lucy and Joe Lourenco emigrated from Portugal in 1984 as a newly married couple; they were only 19 and 24 years old. They spent the first few years of their life in America working in California, saving all the money they could.

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George Saunder's thought process of writing.

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Originally launched on the Atlantic.com A Film by Tom Mason and Sarah Klein Executive Produced by Ken Burns In this rare appearance as a documentary subject, George Saunders reveals the pitfalls of bad storytelling and explains the openness and generosity required to breath life into great characters.

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Critical Context-Quote from another fiction writer:

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Critical Context-Quote from another fiction writer:

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I’m not completely sold on this story told in alternating points of view of two women who at first seem very different. First we see Marie with her children on their way to investigate a puppy advertised for sale because Marie is a mother who spoils her kids, although she says her kids are “well-loved”. Callie on the other hand is trying to hold her family together with no money and she has a child who, at the very least, is hyper-active and probably worse The question I have here is, whose story is this? Callie? Marie? The puppy? I find the two points of view frustrating, especially because Marie and Callie sound alike. We begin with Marie’s point of view and she does change along the way, but the ending is in Callie’s point of view and that is the voice we’re left with."

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> I'm not completely sold on this story told in alternating points of view of two women who at first seem very different. First we see Marie with her children on their way to investigate a puppy advertised for sale because Marie is a mother who spoils her kids, although she says her kids are "well-loved." Marie might be on mood-altering medication, given what the sight of the glorious sun on a cornfield does to her. She seems a little too happy. Callie on the other hand is trying to hold her family together with no money and she has a child who, at the very least, is hyper-active and probably worse. And their filthy dog has a had a pup that they can't keep so she is hoping this stranger who called, Marie, will buy it. When Marie and the kids arrive, I think the reader realizes that Marie and Callie are not that different, and that it was luck or fate or some other invisible force that took them in opposite directions, the same force that decides the fate of the puppy, Callie's son. And both Marie and Callie see it too. The question I have here is, whose story is this? Callie? Marie? The puppy? I find the two points of view frustrating, especially because Marie and Callie sound alike. We begin with Marie's point of view and she does change along the way, but the ending is in Callie's point of view and that is the voice we're left with.

May 28, 2007: " Puppy " by George Saunders

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>The New Yorker: "Puppy" by George Saunders

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I'm not completely sold on this story told in alternating points of view of two women who at first seem very different. First we see Marie with her children on their way to investigate a puppy advertised for sale because Marie is a mother who spoils her kids, although she says her kids are "well-loved."

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Nation's analysis of "Puppy" and Geoge Saunders.

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Setting of "Puppy"
Photo Credits: Tom Sheridan

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New York Times

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Saunders attended Syracuse University.

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"Reading George Saunders’ stories in the new collection “The Tenth of December” is like one of those dreams when you’re in your own house, but things are strangely askew and subtly changed; you’re never quite sure where you are, and the view from the window isn’t quite what you expect it to be, but it’s exhilarating…He is a frequent contributor of fiction and humor pieces to The New Yorker, where six of this book’s 10 stories first appeared. Many of his tales unfold in a time that seems both present and future. There’s as much darkness here as a December night, but what makes these stories such a pleasure is the empathy and wit in those shadows.” -Moira Macdonald

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Originally published Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 5:05 AM

Jeff Paslay / The Seattle Times
"Tenth of December: Stories" by George Saunders Random House, 251 pp., $26
Reading George Saunders' stories in the new collection "The Tenth of December" is like one of those dreams when you're in your own house, but things are strangely askew and subtly changed; you're never quite sure where you are, and the view from the window isn't quite what you expect it to be, but it's exhilarating.

Saunders, a 2006 MacArthur "genius grant" recipient and author of several previous collections of stories and essays (including "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" and "In Persuasion Nation"), is a frequent contributor of fiction and humor pieces to The New Yorker, where six of this book's 10 stories first appeared. Many of his tales unfold in a time that seems both present and future.

In "Escape from Spiderhead," a young man - in lieu of jail time - is held captive in a casually sinister research institute, where he's observed after injections with floridly named pharmaceuticals. (The nightmarish Darkenfloxx is one; less horrific is Verbaluce.) "The Semplica Girl Diaries," the book's longest story, carries a chill reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale": in its pleasant suburban setting, young immigrant women are strung up, via lines through their brains, as garden ornaments. "Exhortation," a brief corporate rah-rah memorandum, hints at something terrible - and necessary - happening in Room 6.

There's as much darkness here as a December night, but what makes these stories such a pleasure is the empathy and wit in those shadows. In "Puppy," two mothers briefly meet; middle-class Marie, who's overcome a miserable past, is horrified by a grubby home she visits in the hope of purchasing a dog for her children. (She doesn't admonish her kids not to touch anything, wanting to give them "a chance to observe her being democratic and accepting, and later they could all wash up at the half-remodelled McDonald's.") Declining the puppy, Marie leaves quickly, unable to contemplate a life that might have been hers; and suddenly the other mother, Callie, takes over the story, demonstrating a resilience and hopefulness that's so moving she seems to jump off the page into your heart.

"My Chivalric Fiasco," the funniest story in the collection, is set in a medieval times-ish theme park, where a young janitor grumbles about the indignities of his job ("Someone threw up in the Garden of Sorrow," a co-worker calls to him) until he's promoted to Pacing Guard. The new job, however, is a "Medicated Role" in which a pill called KnightLyfe enables him to suddenly think like a knight. He entertains the guests, "through use of Wit and various Jibes, glad that I had, after my many Travails, arrived at a station in Life from whence I could impart such Merriment to All & Sundry." (Things don't work out well, though; soon he's calling himself, in partial knight parlance, "a total dickBrain.")

The collection's haunting title story concludes the book, telling of a misfit boy (a chubby kid with "unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms"), a man dying of cancer and a frozen lake - in which each, miraculously, saves the other. You smile, reading of the boy's imaginary conversations with the cool girl in his class at school. ("You should come over this summer," says the Suzanne of his fantasies. "It's cool if you swim with your shirt on.") And you ache for Don, who yearns to "fight no more forever," but ends overwhelmed by his wife's voice and "that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you." There is hope, these stories remind us; we will carry on, through the unfamiliar roads, to home.
Moira Macdonald is the movie critic for The Seattle Times.

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'Tenth of December': 10 beautifully bent stories by George Saunders

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Originally published Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 5:05 AM Jeff Paslay / The Seattle Times "Tenth of December: Stories" by George Saunders Random House, 251 pp., $26 Reading George Saunders' stories in the new collection "The Tenth of December" is like one of those dreams when you're in your own house, but things are strangely askew and subtly changed; you're never quite sure where you are, and the view from the window isn't quite what you expect it to be, but it's exhilarating.

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University of West Florida

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University of West Florida 2011 Common Read Program George Saunders March 24, 2011

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His hometown

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Amarillo is the land of cowboys and cattle situated at the crossroads of America. Discover everything this quintessentially Texan town has to offer.

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Biographical: George Saunders and his wife, Paula, in 1986

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Biographical: George Saunders and his wife, Paula, in 1986

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The New Yorker