UNION

On road trips across the country, two friends confront their deeply held beliefs.

Making their book debut, former Marine Blashek, now an investor in New York City, and Haugh, a journalist who was an intern in the Obama White House and served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, recount the evolution of their friendship, and their views about America, as they traveled to 44 states over the course of three years. The authors met at Yale Law School, and though they thought one another interesting and sympathetic, they found themselves frustratingly enmeshed in “suffocating ideological debates, politics, and the drawing of lines.” Blashek, a Republican, was quick to defend Donald Trump from attacks, suspicious of Haugh’s liberal stance. Haugh, raised by an activist single mother in Berkeley, “had grown up among protests.” While Blashek believed that Trump’s policy on immigration stemmed from a commitment to protect Americans from criminals, Haugh insisted that Trump was racist and, moreover, stoked racism among his followers. “Disagreements lingered,” the authors write, growing “deeper and more painful” as their arguments intensified. In 2017, with their plans for the future in flux, they decided to set off in search of the nation they felt they hardly knew. Their travels took them to a Trump rally in Phoenix, one week after the Charlottesville incident, where, to their surprise, Trump delivered “a script of unity and hope.” Despite protestors and heavily armed militiamen, they witnessed people engaged in passionate—but respectful—argument, unlike the conflicts reported by the media. “They were actually listening to one another,” the authors note. As they traveled, discovering communities bound by “a deep reservoir of social capital,” they learned that “finding common ground wasn’t about getting to agreement. It was about getting to the point where disagreement didn’t matter as much.” Both men, genial guides, ended their travels with a sense of hope about “how [things] could be if we act together to make it so.”

An insightful look at contemporary America.