Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto For Southern Secession (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
Here we go: I am a Southern ex-pat who has lived about half of my life in the South, half in the Northwest and I currently live in New England. If you go into this text expecting hardcore scholarship, you're going to disappointed. While there most definitely IS scholarship, this is not an academic text - it's part travelogue, part angry screed, part observation, part humor book; it is many things. Academic text is it not, however.I rated it so highly because of my personal enjoyment of this book: Thompson's sense of humor is highly compatible with my own - biting, vulgar and full of dysphemisms. His ice-burns are AMAZING.I have a complicated relationship with my home region and Thompson is not lying - the things he says are true. Of course they're not true of every Southerner (and I don't feel that he's implying that), but these things are real and should be called out. I love my home, but it has problems and certain features that often oversimplified in terms of media stereotypes. I feel that Thompson, while generally insulting in his tone (which I have no problem with, but I'm difficult to offend), does shed some light on things.THE END BY ME AGE 29 By turns hilarious and offensive, and often hilariously offensive, Thompson's Better Off Without 'Em explores the pros and cons (mostly pros from his perspective) of the South seceding from the USA. Typically witty and full of intriguing anecdotes and some thought-provoking facts and figures, Better Off Without 'Em is not for the thin-skinned but is nevertheless entertaining. Always interesting to hear about the South from an outsider. As a Southerner though, I have to say I love my state (NC), and think I love it more the way it is than the way it would be in the future of Thompson's imagination! Also glad to say NC thankfully did note rate a chapter heading, so that was good news for us!
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Having lived in the south made this less surprising & more frightening at the same time.
—zuann
Tongue in cheek (sometimes) about why its great to be a Yankee.
—ARMAGEDOn
