Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut's War Against the Gap, and Other Adventures with t Hardback - 2009

by Evan Wright

From the award-winning and New YorkTimes-bestselling author of GenerationKill, a reporter's immersion in outsidercultures-"His style owes more toHunter S. Thompson than to any sortof political correctness" (Newsday).From his work as a reporter at Hustler magazine, to hisNational Magazine Award-winning writing for RollingStone and Vanity Fair, Evan Wright has always hadan affinity for outsiders-what he calls "the lost tribes ofAmerica." The previously published pieces in this collectionchart a deeply personal journey, beginning with his stark butsympathetic portrayals of sex workers in Porn Valley, throughhis raw portrait of a Hollywood überagent-turned-war documentarianand hero of America's far right. Along the way,Wright encounters runaway teens earning corporate dollars asskateboard pitchmen; radical anarchists plotting the overthrowof corporate America; and young American troops on the huntfor terrorists in the combat zones of the Middle East. His subjectsare people for whom the American dream is either just outof grasp, or something they've chosen to reject altogether.Sometimes frightening, usually profane, and often darkly comic,Hella Nation is Evan Wright's meticulously observed tour of thejagged edges of all those other Americas hiding in plain sightamid the nation's malls and gated communities. The collectionalso includes an all-new, autobiographical introductory essay bythe author.