IT'S A BIG CONTINENT: Adventures Across Unknown North America

by Ben Lucien Burman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 1961

More than a dozen books have made Ben Lucien Burman one of the most widely-read authors of our generation. It's A Big Continent, sequel to It's A Big Country, is subtitled ""Adventures Across Unknown North America"". By rights, one expects its scenery to be unfamiliar, its yarns new. Sadly enough, it does not live up to such expectations. Dust Bowl, Burman's latest traveling companion, is a pitiful shadow of past comrades-in-arms. Dialogue, once Burman's strong point, seems to have become a tedium for him. Descriptive passages are few, and lacking their former poetic touches. Most disappointing of all there is hardly a new or original story to be found. For all the mileage (50,000, say the publishers) covered, the pickings are mighty slim. At the Okefenokee Swamp, it's poverty and moonshine. In the Caribbean, it's voodoo and Creole girls with burdens on their beads. Among the indians of the Southwest, it's rattlesnakes and prayer feathers, and among the Eskimos it's the same old stuff about surviving the blizzard by making broth from bones the dogs buried on the trip out. Regrettably, this is like reading an anthology of threadbare anecdotes taken from any random assortment of unscientific travel sagas since Treasure Island. It's too ackneyed and predictable to be funny. Alas and alack, where is the Burman of Catfish Bend?

Pub Date: Feb. 7, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1961

Categories: NONFICTION