The National Road

November 1, 2020

This anthology of beautifully constructed, loosely connected travelogs and reflections centers on movement and mutability, as Los Angeles Review of Books editor Zoellner explores the imprint of the American people on one another and the land. Zoellner was fortified for this project by his love for driving; he calculates the equivalent of more than 30 solo coast-to-coast trips plus journeys into all 48 contiguous states over 20 years, barely stopping at times for a few hours' sleep in his car. Here he considers all kinds of topics, from his quirky quest to climbing the highest point in every state to the decline of local newspapers and mom-and-pop stores. He visits the Czech immigrant town of Spillville, IA, as well as tiny municipalities like St. Louis, where the main industry is traffic tickets. The poignant final chapter sees Zoellner standing witness (after an all-night drive, of course) at the demolition of his grandmother's hand-built home of 61 years. VERDICT Empathetic, candid, and curious, Zoellner has built an eclectic, eloquent guide to the social and physical landscapes of America.--Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

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Starred review from June 15, 2020
America is a vast and daunting prospect, and Zoellner thirsts for more. Longing for a kind of national cultural citizenship, the author knows that absorbing even the barest fraction of a country's everyday majesty, and tribulation, is the work of a lifetime. He seems up to the task. In addition to his seven previous books, Zoellner, the politics editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, teaches at Chapman University and Dartmouth College. The principal inspiration for this collection was journalist John Gunther's Inside U.S.A. (1947), which Zoellner calls "a staggering achievement and the best tome about this nation ever written." Taking on a similar task, Zoellner wonders how an increasingly fractured nation of such disparate lands and peoples remains united, however tenuously, in a consensus informed by the Constitution. The author's diverse, penetrating essays, some previously published, can only answer that question in part, but his effort is valiant, deeply moral, and often moving, based on observations gleaned from 30 years of crisscrossing the country, frequently by car. Zoellner grasps all the touchstones and knows all too well the challenges and depredations, be they cultural or ecological. He also traverses the fault lines, from the income, opportunity, and urban-rural divides to immigration and the growing distrust of key liberal values by those inhabiting "zones of exclusion." He also vivifies many historic emblems, including the mythic scaffolding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or how King Philip's War in Puritan New England was a tragic template for the destruction of Native lands in America. Zoellner exposes naivet�, foolishness, and malfeasance with equal clarity, but he is evenhanded and sometimes produces a piece of sardonic humor, haunting beauty, or melancholy that pulsates on the page. He is both a first-rate reporter with years of newspaper and magazine work behind him and a skilled stylist who makes you want to come back for more. Highly recommended. Zoellner will acquaint you with byways, and mores, you never knew existed.

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August 17, 2020
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.” Agent: Brettne Bloom, the Book Group.