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States of Mind: A Personal Journey Through…
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States of Mind: A Personal Journey Through the Mid-Atlantic (original 1993; edition 1993)

by Jonathan Yardley

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"Alone among the principal regions of the United States, the Mid-Atlantic suffers from an identity problem. Think of the South and you think at once of grits, the Civil War, and magnolias. The same applies to the Northeast (Boston baked beans, town meetings), the Midwest (the Mississippi River, corn as high as an elephant's eye), and West (John Wayne, hot tubs). But think of the Mid-Atlantic and you're likely to draw a blank." "Is that fair? Does the Mid-Atlantic really possess no singular qualities? After all, it's the site of the nation's capital and of seven substantial states, each of which has its own history, geography, and culture. Doesn't this region have its own characteristics and quirks, ones that are distinctly and uniquely Mid-Atlantic in flavor?" "That's the question Jonathan Yardley, Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, columnist, and native of the Mid-Atlantic, sets out to answer. In States of Mind he paints a new and surprising portrait of this previously unrecognized region, bringing out the true colors of these states in the middle, revealing their charms, their flaws, and their personalities." "Starting in his adopted hometown of Baltimore, Yardley drives his high-performance all-American automobile to and through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C., a journey that enables him to capture - in the distinctive style that has made him one of the most respected newspaper writers in the country today - the essence of the Mid-Atlantic, a microcosm of the nation itself." "During his travels he says farewell to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and hello to its celebrated successor, Oriole Park at Camden Yards; visits Frank Lloyd Wright's house, Fallingwater, in the Laurel Mountains of Pennsylvania; attends a reunion at his beloved alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; gives a comparison test to the region's most famous mountain resorts, the Homestead Inn in Virginia, and its rival in turn-of-the-century splendor, the Greenbrier in West Virginia. He stops in, grudgingly, at Williamsburg, "home of crass commercialism"; searches for his grandparents' grave in Philadelphia; and enjoys the singular pleasure of seeing his family's name plastered all over Yardley, Pennsylvania. The author visits the birthplaces of much of America's history, and goes to the centers of much of its present - malls, outlet stores, and fast-food restaurants. He also spends a lot of time stuck in traffic on unsightly, crowded highways, musing in his curmudgeonly way about the modern world and its dubious delights." "It's a journey that takes him many places, including one he had not expected to find. The reader will share his surprise and delight in this, his final discovery."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)
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Title:States of Mind: A Personal Journey Through the Mid-Atlantic
Authors:Jonathan Yardley
Info:Villard (1993), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 289 pages
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States of mind by Jonathan Yardley (1993)

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I only rate this as high as a three because it did say that it was a personal journey, a little too personal for my taste. This seems to be an outgrowth of a shallow article on the Mid-Atlantic that Yardley was commissioned to write. People from the region may be a bit suprised to find North Carolina included, but it is necessary for the conceit of the book.

It might be fair to point out that I didn't like Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck, although that seems to be considered a beloved classic by many people. Steinbeck started losing me in the beginning, boasting about his manliness, and I thought that the whole book was a pretense. His travels were a device to make his opinions seem more significant; they were far too fast and superficial to really allow him to take the pulse of the country. I think he could have written most of what he had to say at his desk without leaving home, but it sounds so more exciting to have our distinguished author seeming to go out in search of the truth. Much the same is true of this book, only it's Travels with My Taurus SHO. (Yardley loved that car.)

Yardley has no home town, having moved around quite a bit in his life, both as man and boy, and been sent to boarding schools for six years, but in the end, he concludes that the entire Mid-Atlantic is home, so we can all stop worrying about his sense of rootlessness. Since some of the most important and satisfying years of his life were spent in North Carolina, he went college at Chapel Hill, it is necessary for him to squeeze that into the Mid-Atlantic States. He also lived in Florida, but trying to include that would really be pushing credulity,

Now that his psyche is taken care of, what is in the book for the rest of us? It is quite a jumble, a mixture of tour guide, diary, personal opinions, a touch of history, no real deep analysis, and no obvious organization. Mostly it consists of a series of fast trips to various places, with his descriptions of the roads taking up almost as much room as his descriptions of the places he visits. We end up with a lot of trivia on motel pools that Yardley swam in, stores and restaurants that he disapproves of, and opinions that he had before he ever set out. While a little bit about the various roads is interesting, in the end, his deliberations on what road to use, how the road differs from a family trip decades before, and what speeds he was driving bore me thoroughly -- he begins to remind me of someone I know who can spend ten minutes telling you that his faucet leaked and he got a plumber to fix it. Some people are charmed by curmudgeons, I find them tedious more often than not. I really ended up having to soldier through this, partly because I wanted to see if someone could really think he had described the region while ignoring the existence of the Chesapeake Bay. Indeed he could. I did give myself permission to quit if he complained for a third time about vinaigrette salad dressings. Yardley wants us to know that he is a preppie, not a yuppie.

There are some highlights: the charm of New Castle, Delaware, or his writing about West Virginia. Significantly, there he had a local brother-in-law to talk to, and so it isn't just a drive-by analysis. He discusses the progress and nonprogress of race relations, a big topic given the demographics of the regions. I enjoyed reading about his visits to the Utz and Rolling Rock factories. On the other hand, I don't care about the centennial parade and details of Roland Park; he anxious for us to understand that he's a regular guy, even if he does live in a famously expensive enclave. I also learned more than I wanted to know about his college reunion and his niece's commencement. Yardley is a well-regarded critic whom some people I know read regularly, perhaps they would care.

I think there is a lot more that Yardley could have said about the region: that almost anywhere that is isn't covered with concrete, it is remarkably green and lush. One transplant from Arizona finds it oppressively green. Much of it would be naturally a forest, and between the variable landscape and the trees (with buldings where there aren't trees), there are almost no horizons unless one is looking out to sea. That in the megalopolis, it is never truly dark and never truly quiet. There is so much light that often the Milky Way is invisible. We are covering some of the nation's best agricultural land with buildings, something more important, I think, than that Yardley doesn't like shopping in outlet malls. ( )
  PuddinTame | Apr 19, 2017 |
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When I was a boy of nine, my family moved from a suburb of New York City to a very small town in Southside Virginia.
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"Alone among the principal regions of the United States, the Mid-Atlantic suffers from an identity problem. Think of the South and you think at once of grits, the Civil War, and magnolias. The same applies to the Northeast (Boston baked beans, town meetings), the Midwest (the Mississippi River, corn as high as an elephant's eye), and West (John Wayne, hot tubs). But think of the Mid-Atlantic and you're likely to draw a blank." "Is that fair? Does the Mid-Atlantic really possess no singular qualities? After all, it's the site of the nation's capital and of seven substantial states, each of which has its own history, geography, and culture. Doesn't this region have its own characteristics and quirks, ones that are distinctly and uniquely Mid-Atlantic in flavor?" "That's the question Jonathan Yardley, Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, columnist, and native of the Mid-Atlantic, sets out to answer. In States of Mind he paints a new and surprising portrait of this previously unrecognized region, bringing out the true colors of these states in the middle, revealing their charms, their flaws, and their personalities." "Starting in his adopted hometown of Baltimore, Yardley drives his high-performance all-American automobile to and through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C., a journey that enables him to capture - in the distinctive style that has made him one of the most respected newspaper writers in the country today - the essence of the Mid-Atlantic, a microcosm of the nation itself." "During his travels he says farewell to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and hello to its celebrated successor, Oriole Park at Camden Yards; visits Frank Lloyd Wright's house, Fallingwater, in the Laurel Mountains of Pennsylvania; attends a reunion at his beloved alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; gives a comparison test to the region's most famous mountain resorts, the Homestead Inn in Virginia, and its rival in turn-of-the-century splendor, the Greenbrier in West Virginia. He stops in, grudgingly, at Williamsburg, "home of crass commercialism"; searches for his grandparents' grave in Philadelphia; and enjoys the singular pleasure of seeing his family's name plastered all over Yardley, Pennsylvania. The author visits the birthplaces of much of America's history, and goes to the centers of much of its present - malls, outlet stores, and fast-food restaurants. He also spends a lot of time stuck in traffic on unsightly, crowded highways, musing in his curmudgeonly way about the modern world and its dubious delights." "It's a journey that takes him many places, including one he had not expected to find. The reader will share his surprise and delight in this, his final discovery."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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A Pulitzer Prize-winning critic details his personal odyssey through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C, discovering his roots and observing life in the Mid-Atlantic states. [retrieved 4/3/2017 from Amazon.com]

"A portion of Chapter 1 appeared in Mid-Atlantic Country magazine.
A brief portion of Chapter 17 appeared in Sports Illustrated"  T.p. verso
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