Overview

Looking for America is one Englishman's quest to understand the United States through a mixture of personal experience - including raising haff-and-hawf children with his American wife - wide-ranging travel and a deep dive into history. Visiting 13 different places, to reflect the 13 original colonies, the author puts key events in American history under the spotlight and moves on to explore what these events tell us about contemporary American politics, society and culture. It starts in Plymouth, with the Pilgrims, who no more intended to be there than the author did (for the Pilgrims it was the tides that prevented them from leaving, for the author and his family, an Icelandic volcano). The book then moves to Boston and Philadelphia because, well... without them, no USA (no Battles of Lexington and Concord or Bunker Hill, no Declaration of Independence, no Constitution). In Washington, DC, it tackles the War of 1812 and explores the reasons the USA has the tune of an English drinking song for a National Anthem. California is visited in search of gold and a reflection on how America is not a colonial nation . Chapter 6 focusses on the Civil War based on a visit to Gettysburg, with thoughts on the author's hero Abraham Lincoln and a reflection on how the Civil War still infuses American politics. In the Black Hills the reader encounters the Lakota Indians at the Crazy Horse Memorial and later at the Little Bighorn battlefield ( Custer's Last Stand ). Following this, the author heads to Tombstone, Arizona, where he nearly re-enacts the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral and tries to comprehend the implications of and current debates around the right to bear arms. Next up: Prohibition, Al Capone and the St Valentine's Day Massacre, but not before the author and his wife are warned off taking the El to watch baseball. Pearl Harbor is next, but not until the author discovers that the US was already in the war even before the Japanese paid their own visit in 1941. Back then to Washington to meet Martin Luther King and his dream at the Lincoln Memorial. A trip to Cape Canaveral, interrupting a perfectly good Florida vacation as far as the author's children were concerned, looks at the Space Race and the Cold War. The book concludes in New York City on 9/11, witnessed by the author from a rapidly-deserted Chicago, where the author misses a Cubs game and reflects on America's place on the world stage today. Looking for America is the ideal general introduction to the United States for those who like their history and current affairs pithy, witty and never knowingly post-truth.

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9781999768805

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Chris graduated in Modern (European) Languages from Oxford University in 1989. Shortly afterwards, he drove across the USA - from New Hampshire to California - and in the process fell in love with the country, and with the girl who became his wife and the mother of his haff-and-hawf children. At the same time, a serious reading habit burgeoned into a deep dive into American history. The product of this has evolved into Looking for America, a synthesis of personal experience, travel and history that gives a unique insight into a unique country.

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