Niagara's landfills are spectacular: mountains of made land, rising out of the earth, gently breathing their methane, almost beautiful in their grassy silence.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Inventing Niagara'

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, that psychedelic cleft in the land that reduced Charles Cook to jaw-slackened silence, might more convincingly belong in another solar system.

BBC: The king of US national parks

And despite the uprising's success in putting two former housing ministers behind bars for sweetheart land deals with real estate companies and the squandering of public funds, there has been nearly total silence about plans and projects for a country stuck dangling between its past and future.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS