THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian hits the road to rediscover the nation’s complicated past on the eve of its 250th birthday.

In this expansive blend of travelogue, civic meditation, and cultural history, Gage (G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, 2022) trades the archives for the open road, visiting 13 regions where America has repeatedly defined, and redefined, itself. Beginning at Independence Hall and ending at Disneyland, she moves chronologically through two-and-a-half centuries of aspiration and contradiction. The concept is simple but effective: a road trip as metaphor for the American experiment, full of detours, breakdowns, and instructive wrong turns. Stops include the Alamo, Valley Forge, Chicago’s Haymarket Square, and Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, each prompting reflections on how the stories we tell at historic sites both reveal and obscure national truths. “Traveling the country and learning about history can provide some existential comfort, since it shows that Americans have managed to get themselves out of big messes before. At the very least it makes it harder to say that things today are worse than ever.” A central theme, the possibility of loving one’s country without overlooking its sins, resonates throughout: “Though you wouldn’t necessarily realize it from the state of our political discourse, it’s possible to hold both sets of ideas—to know your history and still love your country.” Yet the book’s genial, professor-on-sabbatical tone sometimes dulls its momentum; the narrative often feels like a series of polished essays more than a genuine journey. When Gage reaches California’s Orange County, her sharpest insights emerge: Disneyland, she observes, “likes to flirt with the past but also to jumble it up and redefine it,” a perfect emblem of American nostalgia as commerce. Despite the occasional flat stretch, Gage writes with clarity and moral conviction; her mix of curiosity, empathy, and civic faith feels both steadying and necessary.

An earnest and gracefully written, if not especially revelatory, tour of America’s contested memory.