The National Road
Dispatches From a Changing America
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This collection of "eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character" serves to remind us that despite our differences we all belong to the same land (Publishers Weekly).
“How was it possible, I wondered, that all of this American land––in every direction––could be fastened together into a whole?”
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?
From 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.
By 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Zoellner (Island on Fire) draws on his extensive travels across the U.S. over the past 30 years in these eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character. He sketches the history of American migrations, including the Mormon Church's push westward and the relocation of millions of African Americans from the South to other parts of the country, and notes declining mobility rates over the past half-century. ("A country on the move seems to be more reluctant than ever to pick up and go, even when prospects are grim.") Zoellner's investigation into how people are shaped by the places where they live and work includes visits to the set of a pornographic filmmaker in the San Fernando Valley and the birthplace of Mormon leader Joseph Smith in Vermont, and reminiscences of his work at newspapers in Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In the final essay, he details the painful experience of watching workers demolish his deceased grandmother's "hand-built ranch house" in Arizona to make room for a new family's "rambling faux-Florentine palace." Zoellner laces this rambling yet incisive account with perceptive character sketches and astute observations. The result is a poignant reminder that in America, "constant change is our blotchy and beautiful inheritance."
