‘American Journeys’: The Age’s ‘Book of the Year’

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  08.25.08 | 4:40 PM ET

imageAustralian newspaper The Age has selected Don Watson’s American Journeys as its Book of the Year. The political speechwriter takes on race, religion and the legacy of Hurricane Katrina as he travels the U.S. by train. Tony Horwitz gave it a mixed review last March, but for those of us pondering the country’s future this election year, an outsider’s perspective might prove enlightening.

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* Q&A with Bernard-Henri Lévy: Suffering From ‘American Vertigo’

Tags: North America, United States, Literary Travel

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


2 Comments for ‘American Journeys’: The Age’s ‘Book of the Year’

Gary 08.25.08 | 9:58 PM ET

I read this book while I was in Australia. It was one of the worst books I’ve read. The author has an obsession with evangelical churches and guns and goes out of his way to find exactly what he is looking for in America.

Marie 08.27.08 | 1:04 AM ET

As someone who is originally from a part of the country awash with guns and evangelical churches, I thought the book was extraordinarily generous in its appraisal of the west and mid-west. The writing is pitch perfect, capturing and rendering the contradictions and paradoxes of middle America.

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