American Journeys

The best book by an outsider about America since - forever -

David Sedaris

Traveling by train, the Australian author scans a post-Katrina America while racking up an impressive trove of insight and observation few natives could match.

Newsweek

There are passages in this book so good they demand to be read aloud, aphorisms worth turning and examining closely, the distillation of a life thinking about the glamorous America first seen in childhood, later complicated by a thousand contrary images, but still tugging at the imagination. Don Watson has written a profound and deeply personal work that makes for itself a place in the great tradition of American journeys.

Australian Book Review

Mark Twain, Jonathan Raban, Jack Kerouac and Andrew Ferguson would provide tough competition for anyone. Here, Watson competes with whimsy, with curiosity and with an open mind, all backed up by an extremely well-read, closely-watched, examination of wherever he happens to be.

Canberra Times

This thought provoking travel book takes its readers to the very heart of America.

TNT Magazine

Both [Watson and Tocqueville] are fascinated by the Americans, and make uncommon effort to see beyond the obvious. They share a preference for close observation, and a startling capacity to draw broader patterns from the small and familiar...Don Watson has produced an engaging meditation on the United States...The book is beautifully written, with a form that evokes W.G. Sebald's wandering across Europe...

The Canberra Times

This is not travelogue, it is dazzlingly eloquent and perceptive; it is the Tocqueville of damaged but persistent and enduring dreams. Like Tocqueville, and unlike much writing by foreigners about the United States, it is affectionate and comes across the many Americas and their oddities with an uncondemning eye. It is entertaining and celebrates the not-often mentioned capacity of Americans to talk, narrate their lives and utter orations, a tendency which has always interested me as a foreigner. It is full of incident and consistently engaging. As a star of the epigram he's right up there with Tocqueville, and as a story-teller he loses nothing to Theroux.

Tom Keneally