State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

As I suspect most will when they first pick up this book, I turned to the state I know best. There I found no reference to anything I remember about the state where I grew up. It was much more interesting. I grew up in Jackson County Missouri. All of the "Missouri" chapter is about the changes in St. Louis during the last 20 years or so invigorated by a growing community of refugees from Bosnia. The editor/publisher of a Bosnian language newspaper said "St. Louis, after New York City, was like being let out of prison" He reflects on his experience as a visitor in Hannibal, comparing the presence everywhere of Mark Twain in a town where he and his brother went broke as newspaper producers and had to leave in order to survive. This chapter gave me a glimpse of a new Missouri. The book is organized alphabetically for each state plus an afterword for the District of Columbia. (What! no Puerto Rico, no American Samoa?) There is a series of ranking tables at the back with lots of interesting information. Check out table 23 which justifies the insulting story of why the Toothbrush is not called a Teethbrush--it was invented in West Virginia. Each chapter is written by a different author, with a different point of view. The unifiying theme I found was an effort to convey the flavor and character of the state. Louisiana explores ghosts stirred up by Hurricane Katrina. Iowa informs of the relationships between Mexican immigrants from a land where corn was god to Iowa where it is an industry. South Carolina tells me about the gentry of Charleston. "Merrily wallowed in being dismissed as Whiskeypalians. . . . the annual Rockville regatta--a boat race so notorious for its decadent onshore parties that the one sure mark of being a naive outsider was showing up with a sailboat." New York is fictional interview by a journalist with the persona of New York. The interviewer has to filter through a publicist, attorney, historian, geologist before finally entering the presence of the actual New York, a celebrity who vaguely recalls the past and knows money really makes the world go round. All in all, this book has no connection to the guidebooks from AAA. It reminded me more of travel observations of Alexis Tocqueville in early America. This book reveals and informs of a special America people today. Tremendous variety, boundless hope for the future, a love of a past enriched by scoundrels and nobility.

This book is a compilation of essays; one written directly for each state in the United States. Each is written by a different author that has a connection directly to the state that the author is writing about, which authenticates the essays as truly wonderful works about the states they know, and in most case, love. Some of the essays are long, while some are fairly short. Some cover large geographical areas and some cover minute portions of the state. And each has a particular slant about the state that is unique to each essay. From covering life along the Merritt Parkway as a youth in Connecticut to living in the desert in Arizona, each essay presents a look into the wonders of the state that you won't find in any other form of travel writing. Having lived in a number of states, and having traveled to all of them rather extensively, I can attest to the creativity and unique look that each essay provides at each of the states. In many cases, I was getting nostalgic and reliving the memories I had of a particular state. I was reminded of why each state is different, but also so similar. While you may not like every essay, and I am sure each person will find a few to love and a few to hate, varying by the individual reader, this book is a great look at the United States. If, like me, you like short stories and essays, this will be a book you will treasure. I highly recommend this book to all, as it is a wonderful way to learn about the country without leaving the comfort of your home.

Editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey commissioned a group of (very) different writers to write an essay on each of the 50 states. Some of these writers are well-known award winners, others are less familiar. They are reporters, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers and even a musician. Some are natives or long time residents of their states, and others are more recent transplants. Some were even sent to the state just to get a sense of the place from a writer's eyes. . This book is a follow-up of sorts, to the WPA Federal Writers Project of the 1930's, which similarly hired a group of writers to write state guides, "to describe American to Americans." Each guide was more than 500 pages. We all know a lot has happened since the 1930's, and our country has become a lot more homogenized. We all listen to the same music on our XM radios, and we can shop at the same big box stores, or snack at the same fast food restaurants. But each state is still unique, and these essays attempt to show us how. Some of the writers talk about the history, others the landscape, and others describe the personalities of people who inhabit particular places. Some talk about the myths and the positive things that would appeal to the local Chamber of Commerce, and others are more gloomy and talk about the problems. And many of these essays contain all of these things. This is a strange book to review, because each story is so different, both in style (different writers) and obviously in substance. For that reason, readers will enjoy reading some of these essays, and not care for others. But this is a unique and timely book, and a wonderful way to "see" each state. As Matt Weiland told the writers: "To everyone we said: Tell us a story about your state, the more personal the better, something that captures the essence of the place. Not the kind of story one hears in a musty lecture hall or one reads in the dusty pages of an encyclopedia. The kind of story the enlisted soldier tells his boot-camp bunkmate about back home. The kind of story wistful and wise, that begins, 'Well, I don't know about you, but where I come from...." And they did.

An absolutely fabulous collection of essays with some huge names. I have never seen an anthology of new work with such an impressive roll call. And the writing backs up the names. With the exception of one or two bad essays---most notably Will Blythe's self-indulgent essay on New Hampshire---this book contains one amazing essay after another. A great and cheap way to take a tour around this varied country. Highly recommended to everyone.

I've hitchhiked cross-country three times; I've lived and worked in 13 states, and have visited them all with only one or two exceptions. My favorite reading when flying is a collection of essays - for obvious reasons. State-By-State is exactly the kind of book I would pick up in paperback at the airport. [I have a hard cover copy.] I ordered this sight unseen and I was not disappointed. It is very enjoyable reading. To get a sense of whether the various authors hit the target set by the editors, I first read those essays of states where I had spent the most time. Except for the essay on South Dakota (essayist: Saïd Sayrafiezadeh) I was very impressed. I thought the following were particularly excellent: North Dakota, South Carolina, California, and Iowa. In fact, every essay was superb, except Saïd''s. I have no idea why the editors accepted his self-centered, smug out-of-town review. I particularly admired the ability of William T. Vollmann (CA) to cover so much territory in so few pages (his was one of the longer essays at 13 pages) and let me re-live my halcyon days in paradise. It was probably only me, but I did not recognize the names of any of the authors, except for one (Randall Kenan, NC). It appeared most of the essayists were new authors, and I did not recognize any of their novels. That may not be surprising because with a math and science background, I only began a serious reading program in 2002 and have not gotten more recent than the 1920's with some exceptions (Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Anaïs Nin and Ernest Hemingway, being the most notable). If not a novelist, the essayists were more than likely to be on staff or contributors to the New York Times or The New Yorker. Even when I learned one (Tony Horwitz) had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize (1995), I did not recognize any of his books. The editors did include 30 tables of demographic data, everything from cigarette consumption to breastfeeding rate to suicide rate at the end of the book. The book would not have been diminished had these tables not been included. Somehow the tables seemed to make the book appear more like a reference book. Perhaps it was the glaring, bold font. Examples of how the essayists got it exactly right (for the most part): Cristina Henriquez (TX) noted that Texans make a note of whether one is born a Texan or if one is transplanted. Henriquez got that exactly right. Christina came from Iowa. Anthony Bourdain (NJ) reminds us how the state has become a "punchline" but at the same time, when he travels in the US, he notes that every state now looks exactly like New Jersey (malls, franchise eateries, Victoria Secret superstores, and Home Depots). Touché. Jonathan Franzen (NY) reminded me again why so many people have a negative view of the Big Apple and New Yorkers in general (it's likely most people are not aware there is more to New York than the city). The author simply transcribed an interview with the governor's and mayor's straphange