Beautiful Country Burn Again: Trump’s Rise to Power, and the State of the Country that Voted for Him

209 Pages·2018·2.98 MB·English

by  Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain is the author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which won the
National Book Critics Circle Award, the Flaherty-Dunna First Novel Prize, and the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book
Award, in addition to being made into a feature film directed by Ang Lee.
Fountain’s short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, was a national
bestseller and winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, the
Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and a Whiting Award for Fiction.
Fountain graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke
University School of Law. A former practicing attorney, Fountain has taught at the
University of Texas at Austin, and recently completed a two-year appointment as
university chair in creative writing at Texas State University.
ALSO BY BEN FOUNTAIN
BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH CHE GUEVARA

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
First published in the US in 2018 by HarperCollins Publishers,
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007
canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Ben Fountain, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright
material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any
corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Robinson Jeffers, excerpt from ‘Apology for Bad Dreams’ from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Copyright ©
1925 and renewed 1953 by Robinson Jeffers. Used by permission of Random House, a division and imprint of
Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Also in The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Volume One:
1920–1928. Copyright © 1988 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. All rights
reserved. Used by permission of the publisher, Stanford University Press, sup.org
‘Cross Road Blues’ (Crossroads), Words and Music by Robert Johnson. Copyright © (1978), 1990, 1991
Standing Ovation and Encore Music (SESAC). Under license from The Bicycle Music Company. All Rights
Reserved. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
Photographs here and here used by kind permission of David Taylor. Photograph here used by permission of
Associated Press. Photograph here used by permission of Getty Images.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 200 3
eISBN 978 1 78689 201 0
Designed by Renata De Oliveria
For John Issac Fountain
and Lee Caitlin Fountain
and, as ever,
for Sharie
. . . Beautiful country burn again, Point Pinos down to the Sur Rivers
Burn as before with bitter wonders, land and ocean and the Carmel water.
ROBINSON JEFFERS, “APOLOGY FOR BAD DREAMS”