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A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)

A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)

by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

PublicAffairs ·2020 ·288 pages
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About This Book

A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears. Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity. A Libertarian Walks into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.


Reviews

"In a United States wracked by virus, mounting climate change, and ruthless corporate pillaging and governmental deregulation, the lessons from one tiny New Hampshire town are stark indeed ..."

Patrick Blanchfield· The New Republic Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"The result is an entertaining and incisive portrait of political ideology run amok."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"The firefighter put out the word that the little burg in which he lived, 'a flyspeck town buried in the woods of New Hampshire's western fringe,' could be a paradise for libertarians, if only enough of them would move there and take control of—yes, the government ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Every once in a while, a book comes along that is so darkly comedic, with such a defined sense of place and filled with characters that range from the fascinating to the bizarre to the earnest, that partway through reading, it hits you: This has got to become a Coen brothers movie."

Reid Forgrave· The Minneapolis Star Tribune Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Hongoltz-Hetling takes the time to render the real people of Grafton on the page."

Amanda Gokee· Los Angeles Review of Books Read review ↗ Near the Top

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