The New Wild West: Black Gold, Fracking, and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Williston, North Dakota was a sleepy farm town for generations—until the frackers arrived. The oil companies moved into Williston, overtaking the town and setting off a boom that America hadn't seen since the Gold Rush. Workers from all over the country descended, chasing jobs that promised them six-figure salaries and demanded no prior experience.
But for every person chasing the American dream, there is a darker side—reports of violence and sexual assault skyrocketed, schools overflowed, and housing prices soared. Real estate is such a hot commodity that tent cities popped up, and many workers' only option was to live out of their cars. Farmers whose families had tended the land for generations watched, powerless, as their fields were bulldozed to make way for one oil rig after another.
Written in the vein Ted Conover and Jon Krakauer, using a mix of first-person adventure and cultural analysis, The New Wild West is the definitive account of what's happening on the ground and what really happens to a community when the energy industry is allowed to set up in a town with little regulation or oversight—and at what cost.
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Blaire Briody. (2017). The New Wild West: Black Gold, Fracking, and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown. St. Martin's Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Blaire Briody. 2017. The New Wild West: Black Gold, Fracking, and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown. St. Martin's Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Blaire Briody, The New Wild West: Black Gold, Fracking, and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Blaire Briody. The New Wild West: Black Gold, Fracking, and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2017.
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- bioText: BLAIRE BRIODY is an award-winning journalist and editor-at-large for The Fiscal Times. She has written for The New York Times, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Fast Company, Glamour, among others. The New Wild West was the 2016 finalist for the Lukas Work-in-Progress Award from Columbia Journalism School and Harvard's Nieman Foundation, and she received the Richard J. Margolis Award for emerging journalists in 2014. She graduated from UC Davis with a degree in international relations.
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Williston, North Dakota was a sleepy farm town for generations—until the frackers arrived. The oil companies moved into Williston, overtaking the town and setting off a boom that America hadn't seen since the Gold Rush. Workers from all over the country descended, chasing jobs that promised them six-figure salaries and demanded no prior experience.
But for every person chasing the American dream, there is a darker side—reports of violence and sexual assault skyrocketed, schools overflowed, and housing prices soared. Real estate is such a hot commodity that tent cities popped up, and many workers' only option was to live out of their cars. Farmers whose families had tended the land for generations watched, powerless, as their fields were bulldozed to make way for one oil rig after another.
Written in the vein Ted Conover and Jon Krakauer, using a mix of first-person adventure and cultural analysis, The New Wild West is the definitive account of what's happening on the ground and what really happens to a community when the energy industry is allowed to set up in a town with little regulation or oversight—and at what cost.- gradeLevels
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"A fascinating look at what can happen when one area becomes a hot spot of activity with no regulation or oversight."
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- source: Booklist (starred review)
- content: "Briody, winner of the Richard J. Margolis Award for social justice reporting, tells the fascinating stories of people in pursuit of their piece of the oil boom. There's triumph and heartbreak in this blend of reportage, profiles, and personal essay."
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- source: A.J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author
- content: "A fascinating tale about which I knew next to nothing. The characters in the new wild west are as complex and riveting as Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid."
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- source: C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author
- content: "Blaire Briody was on the ground during the epic fracking boom in Williston, North Dakota and The New Wild West provides a fascinating portrait of the times, the people, the community, and the 21st century quest for the American dream."
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- source: Jacqueline Leo, former Editor in Chief, Reader's Digest
- content: "You can feel the shale dust sticking to your body when you read Blaire Briody's fascinating account of living in a North Dakota oil boomtown. You can smell the sulfides in the drinking water and see the fear in the eyes of the women whose men can't handle the drugs and alcohol that make their words too sharp and their fists too powerful. It's Briody's detailed reporting of the place, the people and their passions that make this book so special. This is a binge read."
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July 15, 2017
The "darker side" of North Dakota's "shale oil revolution."In this deeply reported debut, journalist Briody, a former senior editor at the Fiscal Times, tells the stories of roughnecks and other blue-collar workers attracted to high-paying jobs in the oil fields of Williston, North Dakota, a former "sleepy prairie town" where life has been upended by fracking. Most are young men, often refugees from the construction industry collapse. "When he ran out of money and heard about the oil boom, he decided to give it a try," the author writes about one worker. They come by the thousands, tripling the population, making housing scarce, and taxing police and other services. In 2013, the author became intrigued by the boom and left her Brooklyn apartment to investigate. Staying for months at a time and getting close to many workers, she soon learned that abundant job opportunities exist in Williston alongside bleak living conditions, homelessness, drunkenness, crime, and more. Sadness and uncertainty pervade the new version of the town. "The only thing that's out here are jobs. That's it," said Tom Stakes, an ex-preacher who arrived with $20, drank too much, and left with $1,000. Often divorced and remarried, Cindy Marchello offers the vantage of a hard-bitten woman determined to improve herself but struggling to keep up in the hazardous fields ("I will never be tough enough for this job") and wary of her fellow workers (85 percent men): "If you smile at them, they think you'll spread your legs." The narrative's accretion of detail is often overwhelming--e.g., in repetitious, fact-packed sections on a pastor's sheltering of homeless workers in his church--but sometimes highly revealing, as in a lingering image of a trailer smelling like "cigarettes, dust, booze, and stale A/C air." Stronger editing would have helped, but the book contains solid explanations of shale oil extraction, the lack of government regulation, and the ruinous environmental impacts. An unvarnished, overlong account of the facts behind America's newfound oil dominance.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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August 1, 2017
In the fracking boomtown of Williston, ND, gas flares lighting the night can signal wealth to some, the destruction of ancestral lands to others, or another night of homelessness to a few operating the wells. In the penetrating spirit of TV's This Is Life with Lisa Ling, with the depth and insight only a book can provide, Briody delves into the lives of those trying to survive in a town in rapid transition by aiming to understand why some choose to work in the destructive industry, what it takes to survive as a woman in a male-dominated town, the difficulties faced by a preacher trying to help those in need, how Native peoples are being deceived by the government, and the history that led to the current struggles of long-term residents. Through intertwining disparate experiences, a comprehensive portrait is unveiled. As the boom goes bust everything else tragically follows: marriages, people, finances, the environment, and some international corporations. VERDICT Those on both sides of the debate on fossil fuels and fracking will find this work revealing, as will readers seeking a wider picture of the economic downturn.--Zebulin Evelhoch, Central Washington Univ. Lib., Ellensburg, WA
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from September 1, 2017
In June 2013, then 29-year-old journalist Briody quit her job as senior editor for the Fiscal Times in New York and moved to Williston, North Dakota, to embed herself in the shale oil revolution, which turned out to be a five-year free-for-all for anyone willing to do whatever it takes to become rich. Many individuals did become incredibly wealthy, but others were torn from their families, sexually assaulted, abducted, or murdered. Briody, winner of the Richard J. Margolis Award for social justice reporting, tells the fascinating stories of people in pursuit of their piece of the oil boom. There's triumph and heartbreak in this blend of reportage, profiles, and personal essay. The longer Briody is involved in the intricacies of the assignment and in the pain of the people she meets, the more fluid her writing becomes, and she is careful with details, noting, for example, that oil wells are drilled as deep as 3.8 miles, and that when you buy farmland in Williston, you own only what's on the surface. But Briody's account offers far more than information about land rights, fracking, supply-and-demand economics, and greed. It reveals the effect the chance to get rich quick, to be worth something, can have on striving Americans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
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Williston, North Dakota was a sleepy farm town for generations—until the frackers arrived. The oil companies moved into Williston, overtaking the town and setting off a boom that America hadn't seen since the Gold Rush. Workers from all over the country descended, chasing jobs that promised them six-figure salaries and demanded no prior experience.
But for every person chasing the American dream, there is a darker side—reports of violence and sexual assault skyrocketed, schools overflowed, and housing prices soared. Real estate is such a hot commodity that tent cities popped up, and many workers' only option was to live out of their cars. Farmers whose families had tended the land for generations watched, powerless, as their fields were bulldozed to make way for one oil rig after another.
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