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The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence
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Volume
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About This Book
Deep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the last truly quiet town in America. Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned: It's home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory's telescopes, Quiet Zone residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity. But a community that on the surface seems idyllic is a place of contradictions, where the provincial meets the seemingly supernatural and quiet can serve as a cover for something darker. Stephen Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, making the residents of this small Appalachian village his neighbors. In The Quiet Zone, he introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. There is a tech buster patrolling the area for illegal radio waves; "electrosensitives" who claim that WiFi is deadly; a sheriff's department with a string of unsolved murder cases dating back decades; a camp of neo-Nazis plotting their resurgence from a nearby mountain hollow. Amongst them all are the ordinary citizens seeking a simpler way of living. Kurczy asks: Is a less connected life desirable? Is it even possible?
Preview
Reviews
"Kurczy becomes embedded in the community, and with compassion and a journalist's eye he delivers a compelling portrait of a town where people struggle with the same issues as the rest of America, just a little more quietly."
"The Quiet Zone offers a sober portrait of people stumbling their way into an uncertain future."
"What makes this book formidable is Kurczy's relentless investigating, though readers will occasionally feel exhausted by his tendency to over-interview, over-detail and over-report."
"Part folk history, part gonzo travelogue, The Quiet Zone colorfully annotates an elaborate contradiction: a last bastion of the disconnected world, making its final stand at the foot of a 485-foot radio telescope that astronomers use to search for extraterrestrial intelligence."
"Nonetheless, the story remains captivating."
"By the time Kurczy does return to the book's ostensible theme, the clichés are coming fast and furious ..."
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