An American Dreamer
life in a divided country
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An immersive account of a man navigating the startling changes underway in contemporary America, from the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Award–winning author of The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service.
‘Finkel's account is poetic, profound, and irresistibly page turning.’ –Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse
Brent Cummings, an Iraq war veteran, has come home feeling he survived one war only to find himself in the midst of another one. The country he loves and defended for twenty-eight years seems to be unraveling in front of his eyes. Raised to believe in a vision of America that values fairness, honesty, and respect for others, Cummings is increasingly engulfed by the fear and anger sweeping through his beloved country as he tries to hold onto hope about America’s future.
David Finkel, known for his unique, in-depth reporting, spent fifteen years immersed in Brent Cummings’s world to create this intimate, acutely observed, and beautifully written portrait of a man’s life, thoughts and feelings as America becomes ever more divided. Cummings was one of the unforgettable figures in Finkel’s The Good Soldiers, a book about which The New York Times stated, ‘Finkel has made art out of a defining moment in history. You will be able to take this book down from the shelf years from now and say, “This is what happened. This is what it felt like.”’
Like George Packer and Tracy Kidder, Finkel chronicles the everyday experiences of people, through moments of hope and despair, illuminating the struggles of many Americans today in a deeply fractured country at a time of crisis.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Finkel (Thank You for Your Service), a staff writer for the Washington Post, examines America's political, social, and cultural divides in this immersive profile of Brent Cummings, an Iraq War veteran and instructor in military science at the University of North Georgia. Drawing on conversations with Cummings and his friends and family, primarily between 2016 and 2021, Finkel finds that the unifying belief among those he interviews—across the political spectrum—is the idea that the country is fracturing. This is especially true of Cummings, who wrestles with the traumatic social upheaval he witnessed in Iraq and who believes that a similarly traumatic state of social conflict is besetting the country during the presidency of Donald Trump, whom Cummings opposes while living and working in a solidly pro-Trump community. Meanwhile, Cummings and his family face down a series of personal challenges, which Finkel casts against national events. For example, a late chapter recounts Cummings's feelings of isolation and ruminations on political violence during a 2018 stint in Israel, where he worked training Palestinian Authority security forces; Finkel's prosodic narration has Cummings reflecting on Trump's calls for a U.S.-Mexico border wall in the shadow of the West Bank barrier wall. It's an evocative contribution to the shelf on what ails America in the age of Trump.
