Travels in the Time of Trump

It is better to travel than to arrive. So the saying goes...

And Paula DiPerna is a seasoned traveller. Been there. Done that. A modern Marco Polo.

But suddenly in 2017 she finds herself in unknown territory. Uncharted waters. Floundering without a map. And where no digital technology can help her. Where is she? She is in flight from her beloved New York. In flight from America. In flight from the chaos of the Presidency of Donald Trump.

DiPerna’s is the tale of how a nation sleepwalked into what too many people around the world now see as a political nightmare, starting first in the broken town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where DiPerna campaigned for Hillary Clinton, hoping against hope.

It is a tale of incredulity seen not simply through the eyes of an educated, American professional. It is a tale seen through the eyes of taxi drivers, hotel clerks, waitresses and shopkeepers. In Cape Town. In Beijing. In Berlin. It is a tale of a world gone crazy. And it begs the question: what do we do now?

DiPerna does indeed arrive – with a bump.

‘My journey had played fast and loose with time zones and lounges as I ice-skated along on the surface of each day, dabbling in silly luxuries, all transient. And yet, on the road, I could see even more clearly that resistance to mediocrity and rebuilding of the idea of common good is urgent.’ 

Paula DiPerna’s incisive Travels in the Time of Trump puts much-needed distance and time between cataclysmic events to gain a perspective on the dystopian political landscape we all now inhabit.

Paula DiPerna is a writer and frequent media and conference speaker on a variety of subjects, particularly environmental and political issues. As writer and Vice President for International Affairs for the Cousteau Society, she worked with explorer and film-maker Jacques-Yves Cousteau and co-produced numerous documentary films travelling worldwide on the famous vessel Calypso. DiPerna has been widely published internationally in newspapers and magazines, and her book, Cluster Mystery: Epidemic and the Children of Woburn, Mass. was the first book to be written about an infamous leukemia cluster possibly associated with contaminated drinking water. DiPerna has written other non-fiction books, including Oakhurst: The Birth and Rebirth of America’s First Golf Course. Her novel, The Discoveries of Mrs Christopher Columbus: His Wife’s Version is a fictional journal that might have been kept by the wife of Columbus. DiPerna was a candidate for the US Congress in 1992.