A marvelously digressive, wide-ranging account of a journey throughout the plains. Frazier captures the wide-open landscapes, history, environmental contradictions and, especially, the legends and people of the Great Plains. An intrepid traveler -- and voracious reader -- Frazier clocked 25,000 miles in an old van criss-crossing the land where the buffalo once roamed.  (USW172, $15.00)