“Visionary in scope, compassionate in procedure, Wildland brilliantly transmutes our national chaos into absorbing narrative order. Evan Osnos has penned a definitive portrait of what we have allowed ourselves to become, a nation reaping the harvest that long negligence has sown.”
—Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies
W I L D L A N D: The Making of America’s Fury
by Evan Osnos
National Book Award-winning author of Age of Ambition
After a decade abroad, the National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Evan Osnos returns to three places he has lived in the United States—Greenwich, CT; Clarksburg, WV; and Chicago, IL—to illuminate the origins of America’s political fury.
“In this richly reported, beautifully written book, Evan Osnos chronicles two decades of American anger, fury, and political dysfunction. He shows how, from the 9/11 attacks to the January 6th siege of the Capitol, a culture of fear and greed has taken hold, leading to endless war, pervasive mistrust, and the unravelling of the civic project. Osnos gives us a riveting tale of dark times, told with a pathos and humanity that prompts hope of something better.”
—Michael J. Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit
“Evan Osnos’s Wildland is a reportorial tour de force, describing the kaleidoscopic changes that threaten to cause America to come apart at the seams. He deftly connects the dots between the hedge-fund billionaires of Greenwich, Connecticut, the opioid-soaked towns of Appalachia, and the gun-heavy gangs of Chicago. By turning his trained eye as a former foreign correspondent on his own country, Osnos paints an indelible picture that is heart-rending, appalling and hard to put down.”
—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
Evan Osnos moved to Washington, D.C., in 2013 after a decade away from the United States, first as the Beijing bureau chief at the Chicago Tribune and then as the China correspondent for The New Yorker. While abroad, he often found himself making a case for America, urging the citizens of Egypt, Iraq, or China to trust that even though America had made grave mistakes throughout its history, it aspired to some foundational moral commitments: the rule of law, the power of truth, the right of equal opportunity for all. But when he returned to the United States, he found each of these principles under assault.
In search of an explanation for the crisis that reached an unsettling crescendo in 2020—a year of pandemic, civil unrest, and political turmoil—he focused on three places he knew firsthand: Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois. Reported over the course of six years, Wildland follows ordinary individuals as they navigate the varied landscapes of twenty-first-century America. Through their powerful, often poignant stories, Osnos traces the sources of America’s political dissolution.
A dramatic, prescient examination of seismic changes in American politics and culture, Wildland is the story of a crucible, a period bounded by two shocks to America’s psyche, two assaults on the country’s sense of itself: the attacks of September 11 in 2001 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Following the lives of everyday Americans in three cities and across two decades, Osnos illuminates the country in a startling light, revealing how we lost the moral confidence to see ourselves as larger than the sum of our parts.
Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Based in Washington D.C., he writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was the China Correspondent at The New Yorker from 2008 to 2013. His first book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, won the 2014 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2020, he published the international bestseller, Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, based on interviews with Biden, Barack Obama, and others. Prior to The New Yorker, Osnos worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Before his appointment in China, he worked in the Middle East, reporting mostly from Iraq. He and his wife, Sarabeth Berman, have two children.
Photo credit: Peter Marovich
| Wildland, by Evan Osnos, will be published in hardcover by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 14, 2021 (978-0-374-28668-5 | $30.00 | 480 pages). For more information, please contact Sarita Varma, Vice President / Director of Publicity: [email protected]. |
Further praise for Evan Osnos and his prior books
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (2014)
Winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Nonfiction | Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction
A best book of the year: The Washington Post, The Economist, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor, Electric Literature, Politics and Prose
“Evan Osnos has shown that it is still possible to write an illuminating, knowledgeable, absorbing and nuanced book about contemporary China. His Age of Ambition is by far the most thoughtful and well-crafted work on China written by an American journalist in recent years. What sets it apart from other reportage about China is the combination of fascinating storytelling, elegant writing, ingenious contextualization and deep insights.”
—Minxin Pei, San Francisco Chronicle
“Thoughtful and lively . . . Fans of [Osnos’s] ‘Letters From China’ are well acquainted with his knack for crafting telling portraits both of Chinese movers and shakers and the laobaixing, or ordinary folk, finding in their small, individual triumphs and tribulations larger truths about a country so vast, varied and contradictory that it often defies description, let alone interpretation . . . Osnos has adeptly chronicled the remarkable changes in the personal lives of the Chinese populace over the last 35 years, the tension that now animates the public-state relationship and the ideological stalemate bogging society down.”
—Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times
“Osnos takes his reporting a step further, illuminating what he calls China’s Gilded Age, its appetites, challenges and dilemmas, in a way few have done . . . Masterful.”
—John Pomfret, The Washington Post
“A riveting and troubling portrait of a people in a state of extreme anxiety about their identity, values and future. Mr. Osnos paints a China rived by moral crisis and explosive frustration, whose citizens are desperate to achieve wealth, even as they are terrified of being left with nothing.”
—Judith Shapiro, The New York Times Book Review
“This is the golden age of writing about China . . . [Age of Ambition] is another great illustration . . . It is wryly funny throughout, laughing with rather than laughing at the absurdities of daily life in China; without being too obvious about the point, it conveys how contradictory and sometimes out-of-control the contending realities in China are; and it gives a clear sense of the mixed nature of China’s modern ‘rise.’ Plus it’s fun to read.”
—James Fallows, The Atlantic
“Age of Ambition is a splendid and entertaining picture of 21st-century China, painted by a young American who moves with ease around the country rather like one of Mao Zedong’s proverbial fishes.”
—Michael Fathers, The Wall Street Journal
“[Osnos] tells a collection of stories that defy easy conclusions about where China is headed . . . China’s Gilded Age has been every bit as fascinating, colorful and tragic as our own—and Evan Osnos offers an engrossing account of it.”
—Mary E. Gallagher, Chicago Tribune
“Moving and illuminating . . . The stories of China’s strivers are remarkable . . . [Osnos’s] descriptions are always on target.”
—Mike Revzin, The Christian Science Monitor
“Beautifully written . . . The most compelling accounts in Age of Ambition involve neither politics nor fame, but instead the extraordinary experiences of absolutely ordinary citizens . . . An absolute must-read.”
—Edward Steinfeld, Harvard Magazine
“Osnos combines scintillating reportage with an eye for telling ironies that illuminate broader trends; without downplaying the uniqueness of Chinese society, he makes its tensions feel achingly familiar for Western readers.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now (2020)
A Financial Times Best Book of 2020
“Evan Osnos is an immensely talented reporter . . . Joe Biden ably takes the measure of the man and the politician, presenting a picture of the Democratic nominee that is in a few ways unexpected.”
—David Greenberg, The Washington Post
“Osnos has presented us with significant insights into the life of a singular man who has been in national public life for over forty-seven years . . . Osnos has done an exceptional job of capturing the essence of Biden with all his strengths and weaknesses, from his lengthy and sometimes meandering answers to questions, his inappropriate tactile relationship with female supporters, his working relationships with segregationist senators in the past, his knowledge of foreign relations and many of their leaders, and his general ability to relate to the common working man and woman.”
—Paul Markowitz, The National Book Review
“Osnos, who has been writing about Biden for years for The New Yorker, believes he could be more radical in office than people who have tracked his career might believe . . . [A] beautifully written short volume.”
—Edward Luce, Financial Times
“Osnos has written a fast-paced biography that draws on extensive interviews with his subject, as well as with Obama and a host of Democratic party heavyweights.”
—Julian Borger, The Guardian
“This useful account will help readers understand Biden’s mindset and suggests a blueprint for the next four years.”
—Karl Helicher, Library Journal