The Last American Road Trip
A Memoir
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
USA Today bestseller
American Booksellers Association bestseller
“Kendzior is an absolutely terrific writer.” —Sebastian Junger
The New York Times bestselling author of They Knew, Hiding in Plain Sight, and The View from Flyover Country navigates a changing America as she and her family embark on a series of road trips, in a book that is part memoir, part history, and wholly unique.
It is one thing to study the fall of democracy, another to have it hit your homeland—and yet another to raise children as it happens. The Last American Road Trip is one family’s journey to the most beautiful, fascinating, and bizarre places in the US during one of its most tumultuous eras. As Kendzior works as a journalist chronicling political turmoil, she becomes determined that her young children see America before it’s too late. So Kendzior, her husband, and the kids hit the road—again and again.
Starting from Missouri, the family drives across America in every direction as cataclysmic events—the rise of autocracy, political and technological chaos, and the pandemic—reshape American life. They explore Route 66, national parks, historical sites, and Americana icons as Kendzior contemplates love for country in a broken heartland. Together, the family watches the landscape of the United States—physical, environmental, social, political—transform through the car window.
Part memoir, part political history, The Last American Road Trip is one mother’s promise to her children that their country will be there for them in the future—even though at times she struggles to believe it herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this impassioned account, journalist Kendzior (They Knew) documents her family's cross-country road trips in the late 2010s and early '20s. "I wanted the kids to appreciate all fifty states before propagandists tried to prejudice them," Kendzior writes. A native Missourian, she was rattled by news cycles about Trump, Covid, and climate change, and wanted her children "to know that even in the states notorious for political dysfunction, there are people and places to love." Throughout, Kendzior stitches together history, travelogue, and political analysis to deliver a trenchant defense of flyover country, even as she collects "new forensic evidence about who killed America." More than once, she humorously punctures her own self-seriousness: at a diner in Moab, Utah, for example, she recalls lecturing her kids about the grave impact the Supreme Court will have on their generation ("Your prologue will be an epitaph"), though their worries turned out to be more immediate ("Are we still having hot dogs?"). Kendzior keeps her alarmism mostly in check as she visits hidden gems across America, including the hoodoos of the Kansas plains and a temporary lake caused by heavy rains in Death Valley. It adds up to poignant portrait of life in the Trump era.
Customer Reviews
Personal and poignant
The premise of this book, i.e. showing the next generation what America was before its inevitable fall, is both illuminating and heartbreaking. Kendzior is a brilliant observer of American legend and analyst of what’s really going on behind the scenes. This is no nostalgic romp along Route 66; it’s an American swan song viewed from a very personal lens.