Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work Audiobook (Free)

500 feet underground, Jeanne Marie Laskas asked a coal miner named Smitty, “Do you consider it’s weird that people know so little about you?” He replied, “I don’t believe people know an excessive amount of about the way the whole damn country works.”

Hidden America intends to repair that. Like John McPhee and Susan Orlean, Laskas dives deep into her subjects and emerges with character-driven narratives that are gripping, funny, and revelatory. In Hidden America, the tales are about the people who make our lives run every day-and however we barely think about them.

Laskas spent weeks in an Ohio coal mine and about an Alaskan essential oil rig; within a Maine migrant labor camp, a Tx beef ranch, the environment visitors control tower at New York’s LaGuardia Airport,

a California landfill, an Az gun store, the cab of a long-haul vehicle in Iowa, and the stadium of the Cincinnati Ben-Gals cheerleaders. Cheerleaders? Yes. They, as well, are hidden America, and you’ll be amazed by what Laskas lets you know about them: hidden no longer.