Edge Effects

There's something fascinating about border towns. Who hasn't crossed the line into another state to buy fireworks gamble or even to get married? Here are border towns with names as unique as the places themselves names that bridge the boundaries.<p>Robert D. Temple brings you a quirky fascinating and wholly entertaining look at more than eighty North American border towns in Edge Effects. With an adventurer's heart and a historian's keen eye Temple explores life on the edge and how these places have made their place in history. There's big-city Mexicali and empty-quarter Idavada idyllic Vir-Mar Beach and whiskey-soaked Mondak. Then there's prairie-bleak Alsask mountain-high Wyocolo and palmy Florala. And who could forget Texarkana?<p>Along with finding these towns in the first place comes adventure in exploring them by highway four-wheel-drive boots and kayak and in encountering memorable locals: historians farmers waitresses cops forest rangers railroaders and ne'er-do-wells. But even more these places lead us to investigate concepts of borders boundaries frontiers margins and marginality as well as survey lines battle lines picket lines and color lines.<p>Edge Effects brilliantly examines how frontiers enrich cultures and boundaries define them. But more importantly it reveals how edges shape local history-and our lives.