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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
DNF at 47%
I don't normally rate books I DNF, but I shall with this one. Solidly in the two-star range.
This book would be better titled: A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears): also including a catalog of every oddity Grafton County has seen since 1623 as told from a moderately unsympathetic perspective that prefers one-upping witticisms to analysis.
I'm not a libertarian, I did however grow up with people who wanted to move to New Hampshire to be a part of the Free State Project (a more general and less organized plan to just have libertarians move to New Hampshire). With this background, I can tell you that it is ridiculously easy to rhetorically lampoon libertarians in front of an audience. It doesn't take a lot of skill to point at someone, say they believe something silly, and get a laugh out of someone. I picked up this book hoping to learn about the Free Town project and especially how the dynamics went down in Grafton. Instead of that, I got page after page of random bits of knowledge about Grafton County: several pages about a woman who bought a cow from someone who let goats live in his house in Vermont; a preacher who built a gigantic pulpit that was so large the audience couldn't hear him speak; an extremely detailed account of a farmer and her llama chasing off a bear; etc. etc. I'll admit this was interesting, and sometimes even tangentially related, but not really necessary or integral to the Free Town Project.
While the diversions were annoying, I quit reading mostly because of how incredibly cheap the analysis was. Every aspect of the book is infused with an "omg aren't these people so stupid, can you believe how stupid/crazy/insane/selfish they are" which can be useful in moderation, but it gets old, and repeatedly it was misapplied. For example, right around/during the Revolutionary War, there was a push by Grafton County to secede from New Hampshire and become a part of Vermont. Hongoltz-Hetling spends several paragraphs making fun of Revolutionary War era Graftonites for not being able to spell consistently and generally mocking their ideas. Like c'mon, you have plenty of historical material to work with, this is the twenty-first century, making fun of uneducated rural people is beating a dead horse. I also expect a journalist to know the least bit about historical spelling and grammar, if he did, he wouldn't have found that in any way remarkable.
Finally around the second part of the book, Hongoltz-Hetling starts to get more into the weeds of what actually happened re libertarians and Grafton, but his argumentation is about as good as mine when I'm slightly drunk, maybe a little peeved, and arguing with friends. He tried to make the case that the only difference between the relative success of Canaan New Hampshire as compared to Grafton is because of Canaan's willingness to invest in social services and tax higher. We go through pages of this argument (which is about as watertight as a colander) before Hongoltz-Hetling spits out a disclaimer at the end of the insipid analysis that we really don't know if its correlation or causation.
Maybe it gets better and moves beyond the incessant condescension, but I saw no reason to continue reading.
I don't normally rate books I DNF, but I shall with this one. Solidly in the two-star range.
This book would be better titled: A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears): also including a catalog of every oddity Grafton County has seen since 1623 as told from a moderately unsympathetic perspective that prefers one-upping witticisms to analysis.
I'm not a libertarian, I did however grow up with people who wanted to move to New Hampshire to be a part of the Free State Project (a more general and less organized plan to just have libertarians move to New Hampshire). With this background, I can tell you that it is ridiculously easy to rhetorically lampoon libertarians in front of an audience. It doesn't take a lot of skill to point at someone, say they believe something silly, and get a laugh out of someone. I picked up this book hoping to learn about the Free Town project and especially how the dynamics went down in Grafton. Instead of that, I got page after page of random bits of knowledge about Grafton County: several pages about a woman who bought a cow from someone who let goats live in his house in Vermont; a preacher who built a gigantic pulpit that was so large the audience couldn't hear him speak; an extremely detailed account of a farmer and her llama chasing off a bear; etc. etc. I'll admit this was interesting, and sometimes even tangentially related, but not really necessary or integral to the Free Town Project.
While the diversions were annoying, I quit reading mostly because of how incredibly cheap the analysis was. Every aspect of the book is infused with an "omg aren't these people so stupid, can you believe how stupid/crazy/insane/selfish they are" which can be useful in moderation, but it gets old, and repeatedly it was misapplied. For example, right around/during the Revolutionary War, there was a push by Grafton County to secede from New Hampshire and become a part of Vermont. Hongoltz-Hetling spends several paragraphs making fun of Revolutionary War era Graftonites for not being able to spell consistently and generally mocking their ideas. Like c'mon, you have plenty of historical material to work with, this is the twenty-first century, making fun of uneducated rural people is beating a dead horse. I also expect a journalist to know the least bit about historical spelling and grammar, if he did, he wouldn't have found that in any way remarkable.
Finally around the second part of the book, Hongoltz-Hetling starts to get more into the weeds of what actually happened re libertarians and Grafton, but his argumentation is about as good as mine when I'm slightly drunk, maybe a little peeved, and arguing with friends. He tried to make the case that the only difference between the relative success of Canaan New Hampshire as compared to Grafton is because of Canaan's willingness to invest in social services and tax higher. We go through pages of this argument (which is about as watertight as a colander) before Hongoltz-Hetling spits out a disclaimer at the end of the insipid analysis that we really don't know if its correlation or causation.
Maybe it gets better and moves beyond the incessant condescension, but I saw no reason to continue reading.
This book takes a close look at two things:
- A Libertarian movement to take over a small town in New Hampshire and
- The changing (and growing) bear population in New Hampshire.
The mix of these two things leads to several interesting conclusions, but the one most salient is this: Libertarianism turns out not to be very good at fostering strong bonds in communities. This isn't surprising for a philosophy built on the idea that humans owe nothing to one another.
Hongoltz-Hetling does a great job documenting the two sides of this arc in ways that are both interesting and amusing, but also, pretty sad for everyone involved. And that includes the bears.
Well worth a read.
- A Libertarian movement to take over a small town in New Hampshire and
- The changing (and growing) bear population in New Hampshire.
The mix of these two things leads to several interesting conclusions, but the one most salient is this: Libertarianism turns out not to be very good at fostering strong bonds in communities. This isn't surprising for a philosophy built on the idea that humans owe nothing to one another.
Hongoltz-Hetling does a great job documenting the two sides of this arc in ways that are both interesting and amusing, but also, pretty sad for everyone involved. And that includes the bears.
Well worth a read.
Great idea, bad execution.
You can tell the author is a journalist and not a book author. He has a hard time connecting the chapters together and it feels scatterbrained. It feels less like a story of a town and more like a random collection of so-so articles, many overwritten.
DNF
You can tell the author is a journalist and not a book author. He has a hard time connecting the chapters together and it feels scatterbrained. It feels less like a story of a town and more like a random collection of so-so articles, many overwritten.
DNF
funny
informative
slow-paced
funny
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
I enjoyed the author's tongue-in-cheek style of writing about this failed experiment in establishing a libertarian paradise. There was a greater focus on bears than I expected but it was a pleasant surprise.
Dislikes were the over-usage of chapter cliffhangers and the somewhat anticlimactic ending. This latter complaint is not a fault of the author although I was led to believe that the town's death knell would have more to do with bears than it really did.
One of my favorite aspects of this whole ordeal is that Grafton residents rely on towns with higher taxes for everything, from jobs to gasoline to essential services like firefighting. The inability to look around and realize the reason for their dilapidated town makes me depressed about the lack of self-reflection that will occur due to the cutting of federally funded social programs. The "Free Keene" movement at the end sickened me. Of course they'd prefer to hijack a town with nice ameneties instead of going to Grafton. And they won't bother to consider where those ameneties came from.
Another favorite part was when the author returned to find these freedom-lovershaving had to literally fence themselves in to protect themselves from the bears . The irony is delicious.
Dislikes were the over-usage of chapter cliffhangers and the somewhat anticlimactic ending. This latter complaint is not a fault of the author although I was led to believe that the town's death knell would have more to do with bears than it really did.
One of my favorite aspects of this whole ordeal is that Grafton residents rely on towns with higher taxes for everything, from jobs to gasoline to essential services like firefighting. The inability to look around and realize the reason for their dilapidated town makes me depressed about the lack of self-reflection that will occur due to the cutting of federally funded social programs. The "Free Keene" movement at the end sickened me. Of course they'd prefer to hijack a town with nice ameneties instead of going to Grafton. And they won't bother to consider where those ameneties came from.
Another favorite part was when the author returned to find these freedom-lovers
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gore
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
This was a trashy beach read from hayls and I's anniversary vacation. I enjoyed the silly premise as it hits too close to home sometimes. The writer at times described people and places as if they were lesser and it grew extremely old towards the end. The writer seems to not be from a rural area and doesn't appreciate that form of life that many strive for.
funny
informative
fast-paced
medium-paced
This book was interesting but felt very unfocused at times.
dark
funny
informative
tense
medium-paced
funny
informative
medium-paced