The Place Within

Each of the writers in this beautiful collection of nearly all original pieces evokes a different place in our country's diverse landscape - a place he or she lived in, visited, or was intimately influenced or shaped by. These writers, in voices ranging from the lyrical to the meditative, awaken or allow us to discover anew a feeling for what we call America in all its many faces. Here you'll find the American spirit in Phillip Lopate's gridlocked "Manhattan," in Richard Rodriguez's gay San Francisco, and in Gerald Early's uneasily "integrated" St. Louis. In her moving essay on South Dakota,…