The national road : dispatches from a changing America / Tom Zoellner.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Berkeley : Counterpoint Press, 2020Description: 263 pages ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781640092907
- 1640092900
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 973 Z85 | Available | 33111010410047 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
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.
"The National Road is a collection of essays about American places, each dealing with contentious matters: religion, politics, sex, race, poverty, loss and the stubborn persistence of national pride, despite abundant reasons for cynicism. An important question lies at the heart of this collection: what does it mean to "belong" in America in the midst of an era when rootedness to a particular piece of ground means less than at any time during our history? These essays cover a wide range of subjects: the changing geography of pornography, the proliferation of "dollar stores," the unique pain of losing a house, the joy and futility of cross-country drives, the ways that certain town governments can turn vicious, the quest to stand upon the topographical roof of every state, a journey into the wilderness to find the body of a notorious killer, a unique examination of the most "American" major religion in the gloom past midnight, a personal eulogy for the metropolitan daily newspaper. From their particular angles, they all examine changing definitions of this shared soil. In a time of collective unease, the American land - this magnificent 3.7 million square miles -- is the lowest denominator of what we have in common"-- Provided by publisher.