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Random House
July 2011
On Sale: June 28, 2011
451 pages
ISBN: 1400068533
EAN: 9781400068531
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The End of Country is the compelling story about the
epic battle for control of one of the richest natural gas
deposits the world has ever known: the Marcellus Shale,
worth more than one trillion dollars. In a remote
northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, an intense conflict
begins, pitting the forces of corporate America against a
community of stoic, low-income homesteaders, determined to
acquire their fair share of the windfall—but not at the cost
of their values or their way of life. Though the natural gas
is extracted through a controversial process known as
hydrofracking, many couldn’t resist the offer to lease their
land in exchange for the promise of untold
riches.
For years, this part of the world was
invisible to all but the farmers, urban transplants, and
small landholders who called it home. But journalist Seamus
McGraw, a native of the region whose own mother was one of
the first to receive a leasing offer, opens a window on a
stiff-necked group of Pennsylvanians as they try, with
little guidance or protection from the state or anyone else,
to balance the promise and the peril of this discovery.
Along the way, McGraw introduces us to a host of colorful
characters, from a gas company land agent with a Green Beret
to a wizened quarryman with an old coonhound, a .22 rifle,
and an unerring sense of right and wrong who leads a
personal crusade to police the gas company’s
operations.
The cutthroat dash by petrodollar
billionaires to secure drilling leases will make some poor
residents rich, and put the entire community at risk of
having its land tainted by toxic chemicals and its water
supply contaminated by gas. Above all, it will test the
character of everyone in the community as they fight against
“the end of country.”
Rich with a sense of place and
populated by unforgettable personalities, The End of
Country is a tale of greed, hubris, and envy, but also
of hope and family—and the land that binds them all together.
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