I love books like this and am grateful for folks like Tom Zoellner, who go out and travel and write about what they encounter on the road. I travel a bit, but not often and over the decades have found places I love transformed, never for the better, over time. If cities aren't all reinventing themselves through gentrification to a dull sameness, they are becoming rust belt-ish in their poverty. I have never seen the polarization of this country to the extant that I've seen it this year, and it's scary and sad. It barely feels like we are one nation with so much division.Don;t even get me started on the "dollar stores" everywhere I look these days. Right up there with the "payday lenders." Don't know what will happen in the future, but I did enjoy reading this series of snapshots of our country. It was interesting and insightful. Thank you Mr. Zoellner. Written book.

This book of essays from regional places in the U.S. reminded me a bit of William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways with a bit of Charles Kuralt thrown in. There was no particular travel itinerary, just reports of somewhat odd and unknown areas and attitudes. My favorite essays were the ones where I knew the region such as the desert between Las Vegas and Idaho, and essays on porn mansions and Dollar Store locations were interesting.

First, Tom Zoellner’s The National Road: Dispatches From a Changing America, which “attempts to paint a picture of ‘American place’ in this uncertain era of political toxin and economic rearrangement. These are observations collected from thirty years of traveling through the United States and topics of more recent reporting. I had hopes that the “whereness” of America might be perceived through its territorial shards and fragments.”

This is endlessly fascinating, but my enjoyment was uneven. I liked some a lot, and sometimes his writing blew me away, but it also had an almost academic, lofty tone and I ended up skimming.

Zoellner doesn’t actually focus on the politics of the current moment, which is a relief or a disappointment depending on your preference. Rather he looks at many topics that tie into the current political climate — poverty, race, sex and morality, America’s unique brand of national pride and patriotism among them — and weaves these into tightly specific locations, exploring what place and “home” can mean for people and politics.

We all carry maps of our country — however big or small — around in our minds, a web of association and memory, and understand ourselves through their reading. It is a physical kind of patriotism.

One passage in “Your Land,” which points out that “home as a physical place is a shifting concept” was especially resonant, naming objects or landmarks that hold special significance to him, although they may not appear so strikingly meaningful. I loved this because having moved around often in my adult life, I’ve found how almost magically powerful these kind of associations can be, and how strange it can seem that they’re not at all meaningful to anyone else. I loved sitting with this idea for awhile, and his vivid descriptions, and considering what it meant.

This of course leads to the idea of the value of “retracing” our pasts, another recurring theme here, and one especially poignant as these essays span so much time: “Life feeds best on new experiences and does not benefit from endless retracing, but I sometimes cannot escape the draw.” Can any of us?

The essay “The National Road” is about Dollar General stores, and how they’re changing the suburban landscape, for better or for worse (worse, almost universally for worse). The nutrition of the food sold there is abysmal, and they almost inevitably spring up in areas that desperately need wider, cheaper access to nutritional food. He quotes, “The Dollar General method is the curious inverse of the Ray Kroc method, seeking not growth but decline,” highlighting Dollar General’s proliferation in economically declining or stagnating rural areas.

So the new national road is paved with dollar stores, cutting across the country through areas where the population most needs to stretch their (often fixed) incomes and has the fewest options for doing so. This was a depressing but illuminating story that speaks volumes about our current political mindset in regions where decline is rampant and possibilities bleak, and this was pre-Covid.

In “The Valley,” he writes about the business of pornography, including, somewhat hilariously, the luxurious mansions rented for the purpose of filming it. It also looks at changes in porn thanks to the internet, a subject I realized is unbelievably compelling thanks to Jon Ronson‘s podcast The Butterfly Effect (highly recommend; covers similar ground).

One powerful piece, “At the End There Will Be Strangers”, is about the demolition of his grandmother’s house, making way for a mansion, and ideas around memory’s fragility and the significance of place, even as those who come after us have no such emotional connections to the same spots.

Also this: “There is such unexpected beauty in the visual bric-a-brac of the roadside: those great sad homes on the edges of small towns in western Maryland lit by electric candles in front of window curtains…” Shriek! I grew up in just such a house in that exact location! He’s hitting close to my hometown as the National Road actually runs through it, and the house I speak of sits directly on it, so that was a surreal moment, although I’m surely assuming too much.

Still, exciting to see anything about this area in print (actually the region got a brief mention in Liar’s Circus too, but nothing evocative like here). So when this makes personal connections they’re powerful, but when not I had trouble appreciating it.

This was such an interesting read, as it encompasses decades spent on the road by the author. I love how he described the places he has been. This was a really interesting read.

"Dispatches from a changing America" is the second title of Tom Zoellner's absolutely brilliant and magnificent account. In 13 essays that take us anywhere within the United States (Zoellner tells us that he has visited 46 of the 48 capitols of the country). In "Mormon Historical Sites at Night", he describes his different trips throughout the US and nighly visits from the birthplace of Joseph Smith in Sharon, Vermont to Carthage, Illinois. Tom Zoellner is always on the move, behind the wheel: "The largest city in the US, where I have not been is Fayetteville, North Carolina."
Fact check: Fayetteville has a population of 209,468 and ranks #108 among the lafrgest cities according to Wikipedia.
In Spillville, Iowa, we learn that the famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak has lived there and thrived among his fellow countrymen who mostly worked in the meat industry in the late 19th century. Zoeller describes the development of this town from Dvorak's days until now, talks to Czech Americans in the 3rd and 4th generation, drinks beer with working class Americans and talks to politicians running in the state that always has come first in primary elections. During his endless travels, he takes the pulse of a country that is rapidly changing.
"Welcome to Dirtytown" takes a look at the changing porn industry in Los Angeles and the five, six mansions that the production companies are renting and rearranging.
The grocery chain Dollar General establishes itself in lots of areas in many states where poor and impoverished people live and local sellers cannot compete with the giant's central negotiated prices. Since they often lack fresh vegetables and fruit, poor people who buy their groceries there to save money they need, gain more weight and eat unhealthy.
Did you know that the city of St. Louis consists of 88 municipalities and that people can get several tickets from one of the 88 different police forces while driving a bunch of blocks on the same street? Giving tickets to tourists and other travelers is an important source of income for some municipalities that are as large as three blocks.
Zoellner addresses climate change and the history of native Americans in "King Philip's Shadow". In "At the End There Will Be Strangers", he watches how his grandmother's old house in Arizona gets demolished after the old lady's death and after the house has been sold to a rich Canadian investor. And Zoellner gets philosophical about life and the ever changing American towns: "And this is America, too - a country of destruction and reinvention, where the scythe sits on the table next to the blueprint. We think we own the land, but the land survives while we and our sand structures do not."

Thanks to NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for an ARC of this book for a neutral review.



I will also talk about the book on my YouTube Channel: in a video "New Books in October 2020" in the beginning of October. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvCqhSUyA3lSEcLJYT4u1kg

The road is long and winding in this collection of essays, from Mormonism to mansions used as sets for pornographic movies, from the demise of many print newspapers to the inescapable round robin of tickets and court appearances many St. Louis area residents are susceptible to, simply because they are driving while poor. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and got out of it what I always hope to get out of an observational non-fiction book: history and first-person experiences. Thanks to Netgalley and Counterpoint Press for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my opinions and review.

A really interesting travel book ,enjoyed reading it from my armchair locked in due ton the pandemic.The author has a really engaging style of writing enjoyed being introduced to thevpeopkevand places he met along the way For those who enjoy traveling or just traveling while in your home this is the book for you.#netgalley #counterpoint

With this collection of essays based on his experiences of forty years spent driving U.S. American roads, Zoellner, politics editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and educator at Chapman University and Dartmouth College, attempts to recreate a monumental task last undertaken by veteran journalist John Gunther in 1947. Gunther’s tome Inside USA, still in print, shone a spotlight on societal issues of the late 1940s and captured personal impressions gained by travelling, by road, through 48 different states.

Zoellner succeeds in his attempt. It is a testament to his investigative skill, his relentless perseverance and his accomplished writing style that he can demonstrates, in The National Road, the big fractures in the American dreams of limitless opportunities and prosperity. Ironically, US American citizens united by ever-improving physical and intellectual infrastructures, are more fragmented than ever before, Zoellner points out to his readership. Zoellner does not shy away from controversial issues: in the opening essay, the Mormon beliefs and customs receive acerbic treatment, for example, as later on do the questionable practices of small-town officials pursuing the economically vulnerable for alleged road traffic offences.

Perhaps to be expected in a tome that covers such a vast expanse of miles and moral grounds, there are some incongruous passages in this essay collection. The passages about Zoellner’s attempts to scale the highest peak in each of the contiguous 48 states, his recollections of driving until the very edge of tiredness, and his steadfast refusal to sleep in motels, for example, can appear boastful and detract from his incisive explorations. Zoellner is brave enough to challenge accepted facts and to dismantle historic emblems, writing incisively about issues as diverse as the 17th century King Philip War, the unseen casino rituals, or the insipid rise of dollar stores in declining neighbourhoods. His writing style is sublime, with a spectrum that ranges from sardonic humour and brutal honesty to acute, incisive journalism. Zoellner is equally capable of elegiac nostalgia and deeply personal discoveries, as shown in passages when he ponders his hard-worn journalistic career, laments the death of metropolitan newsroom reporting, recalls his initially failed literary ambitions as a struggling writer in New York, or his witnessing of the demolition of his grandmother’s house in Phoenix.

This incisive, deeply moving and stylishly written book takes a deserved place next to two other compelling road narratives that analyse the contemporary U.S. American consciousness: Deep South (2016), which details Paul Theroux’ back road journeys through Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia; and Home in America: On Loss and Retrieval (2016), which follows Thomas Dumm’s long drive from western Massachusetts to western Pennsylvania. I am grateful to NetGalley and to the publishers, Counterpoint Press, for an ARC in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

A great travel book that shows the growing polarization in America, a reflection on the time and current political climate, as well as the people creating it.