Chosen Country

A Rebellion in the West

By: James Pogue

Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White

Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

In Chosen Country, listeners are given an extraordinary inside look at America’s militia movement that shows a country at the crossroads of class, culture, and insurrection.

In a remote corner of Oregon, James Pogue found himself at the heart of a rebellion. Granted unmatched access by Ammon Bundy to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Pogue met ranchers and militiamen ready to die fighting the federal government.

He witnessed the fallout of communities riven by politics and the danger (and allure) of uncompromising religious belief. The occupation ended in the shooting death of one rancher, the imprisonment of dozens more, and a firestorm over the role of government that engulfed national headlines.

In a raw and restless narrative, Pogue examines the underpinnings of this rural uprising and struggles to reconcile diverging ideas of freedom, tracing a cultural fault line that spans the nation.

©2018 James Pogue (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

More like a first person narrative

I listened to the book and the author has some great insights into modern Western rancher politics. However, I didn't learn that much about the siege itself other than the author's personal experiences with Ammon and Lavoy and what he heard about it from people who were there.

He probably could have edited most of the parts about the author's drug abuse, shop lifting and vagrancy out - didn't add much to the story and came across as too narcissistic.

Know your enemy

This is a scary look at the lunatic fringe in the West. These people pose the single biggest internal threat to the United States and it’s difficult to understand how so many people support a family who is essentially stealing from each and every American by running their cattle on land owned by each and every American. At the end of the day this is a book about thieves and gangsters hiding behind the mask of religion and righteousness.

Slacker Journalism

Hunter S. Thompson's works often involved himself and his own shenanigans within the overall story and it was labeled "Gonzo Journalism". "Chosen Country" could be called "Slacker Journalism". We learn a lot about the author and his vagabond ways. There are many accounts of the author just hanging out in various bars, hitchhiking, camping, smoking cigarettes. I understand that it explains how he was able to befriend some of these people that many of us see as right wing nut jobs. This style of writing also shows that these people aren't that different from the author, and the author assumes he's not that different from the reader. For the most part, the book is effective at presenting these occupiers as humans and I did feel some empathy for them. The author is not that good at providing the nuts and bolts of what happened, who was involved, and how it unraveled. It's all in there, but so much of the book is about the author, his history, his family, his feelings, that the story of Ammon Bundy and the occupation of the wildlife refuge gets muddled. All the facts are there but it's easy to lose track of who's who. This problem can be solved with a few Wikipedia articles, but I can see how some readers could be upset if they were expecting more of a traditional book about what happened at that wildlife refuge instead of a freewheeling twenty something coming of age story that happens to be set during the occupation. of the refuge. It's a good book and I enjoyed it. The author recently (Spring 2022) wrote a popular Vanity Fair article about the New Right. I heard him on a podcast and thought I'd check out this audiobook. The narrator does a great job. Your enjoyment of this book depends entirely of what you think of this writer as he presents himself in the story, because he tells you about his hometown, his childhood, his various relatives, his cocaine use, pot smoking, poor treatment of girlfriends, Adderall, beer, and cigarettes. It gets in the way of the actual account of the events that most people are reading the book for, but it allows the author to make some close connections with some of the players involved. I hope the author got this out of his system. Slacker Journalism is nowhere near as entertaining as Gonzo Journalism.

Inaccurate and tedious

I personally witnessed the same events. The author misrepresents much of what happened. The author also exaggerates his ties to the inner circle of the militia. In addition, the lengthy excursions into the author's own angst-ridden bouts of drunkenness and drug use are frankly tedious.

Story by a drunken drugged out 20 something!

Most of it Seemed to be made up it sounded a little far-fetched that people would have conversations with somebody 15 like such an outsider. He could’ve been there but I’m not 100 percent positive that he was!

What a pile of hogwash by a motel reporter!!

A Motel Reporter is someone who checks into a motel adjacent to the site of a hot news story to give him/her a shoddy claim to being on the scene, orders Domino's, watches CNN on TV, and writes "breaking news".

The straw that broke my camel's back was the constant referral to
III% (NOTE: THIS IS THE ROMAN NUMERAL FOR 3...hence they are called "3 Percenters". Most definitely NOT the "One-Hundred and Eleven Percenters" this goof keeps saying he had in-depth conversations with.