Rao - Great American Outpost

An important addition to the literature of the US shale revolutiontoo often underestimated and misunderstoodGreat American Outpost reminds us that the revolution is not just a story of frack fluid and oil production but a story of the human experience. Through Didionesque scenes of the North Dakota boom, Maya Rao evokes America in extremis with glimpses of lives and decisions that are sometimes frightening, sometimes inspiring, and sometimes just nuts.

Gary Sernovitz, author of The Green and the Black: The Complete Story of the Shale Revolution, the Fight over Fracking, and the Future of Energy

From the upper reaches of North Dakota, Maya Rao extracts a potent metaphor for modern American capitalism. Her bracing dispatch from the Bakken reveals the toll of fracking on everything it touchesfrom the soil of the Great Plains, to the precarious lives of roughnecks, to the remote communities that became boomtowns full of hustlers, dreamers, and opportunists. Keenly observed and vividly told, Great American Outpost also has an undercurrent of anxiety that seeps from abandoned oilfields into the larger landscape of our culture, in the form of a question few dare to ask: What remains when the profiteers move on?

Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

Im grateful for this stunning work of immersive reportage. Maya Rao tells us a tale from ground zero for modern American capitalism: the North Dakota oil rush, from boom to bust. Its a remarkable book for right now, mixing compelling portraits with smart, big picture analysis. Rao shows us stories that visiting reporters would likely miss, and the result is a rich, nuanced book thats a crucial guide to understanding twenty-first-century America.

Tracie McMillan, author of The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebees, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table

With oil at $100 a barrel, greed in North Dakota was manifest and the characters were right out of the Gold Rush, from some of the craziest get-rich crooks to the recently paroled who could make $90,000 a year hurling big trucks down two-lane roads. Maya Raos description of one of Americas biggest rushes of sheer greed ranks right up there with the great books of the California Gold Rush of 1849. This is one of the best books in America about working men and womenand life in the oilfields when the lid blows off.

Humpy Wheeler, retired NASCAR promoter and former president of Charlotte Motor Speedway

Maya Rao didnt just write about the boomtown life, she lived it capturing the hope and despair of a nation of citizens looking for a break. A gimlet-eyed look at the oil, dust, and, most importantly, the people living on our countrys last frontier. This is essential reading for anyone interested in how the American Dream or the American Nightmare can be made and lost in the blink of a two-week pay period.

Stephen Rodrick, contributing editor to Rolling Stone

To my parents