THE GREAT PLAINS <i> by Ian Frazier (Penguin: $9.95) </i>

The vast grasslands that stretch from Canada to the Texas panhandle daunted the pioneers but fascinate Ian Frazier: His book is a rambling, enraptured meditation on the land that once sustained the buffalo and numerous Amerindian tribes. Frazier crisscrosses the heart of the continent to find the site of Sitting Bull’s lodge; the battlefields where George Custer fought; the fort where Crazy Horse was ignominiously murdered. Although his primary interest is 19th-Century history, Frazier is too keen an observer to overlook the marks the last 90 years have left on the Plains. He visits missile silos, strip mining pits and abandoned farms--grim monuments to misguided industry and agriculture. While the descriptions of small towns and large land masses are often intriguing, it is Frazier’s remarkable ability to convey a sense of the openness of the Plains that give this best-selling book its considerable appeal.