What does it mean when a nation accustomed to moving begins to settle down, when political discord threatens unity, and when technology disrupts traditional ways of building communities? Is a shared soil enough to reinvigorate a national spirit?įrom the embaattled newsrooms of small town newspapers to the pornography film sets of the Los Angeles basin, from the check-out lanes of Dollar General to the holy sites of Mormonism, from the nation’s highest peaks to the razed remains of a cherished home, like a latter-day Woody Guthrie, Tom Zoellner takes to the highways and byways of a vast land in search of the soul of its people.īy turns nostalgic and probing, incisive and enraged, Zoellner’s reflections reveal a nation divided by faith, politics, and shifting economies, but-more importantly-one united by a shared sense of ownership in the common land. “How was it possible, I wondered, that all of this American land-in every direction-could be fastened together into a whole?” Zoellner teaches at Chapman and Dartmouth Colleges, serves as politics editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books, and is the author and coauthor of seven previous books. This collection of eloquent essays that examine the relationship between. From “a superb reporter and a deep thinker,” this New York Times Editors’ Choice is “a sneakily ambitious book whose 13 'dispatches' present a sweeping view of the American land and its inhabitants” ( The New York Times Book Review)-and serves to remind us that despite our differences we all belong to the same land. Tom Zoellner's new essay collection, The National Road, explores this kind of Americana, peeking into corners few of us get to see. Buy a cheap copy of The National Road: Dispatches from a.

The National Road by Tom Zoellner