The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir

In this impassioned account, journalist Kendzior (They Knew) documents her family’s cross-country road trips in the late 2010s and early ’20s. “I wanted the kids to appreciate all fifty states before propagandists tried to prejudice them,” Kendzior writes. A native Missourian, she was rattled by news cycles about Trump, Covid, and climate change, and wanted her children “to know that even in the states notorious for political dysfunction, there are people and places to love.” Throughout, Kendzior stitches together history, travelogue, and political analysis to deliver a trenchant defense of flyover country, even as she collects “new forensic evidence about who killed America.” More than once, she humorously punctures her own self-seriousness: at a diner in Moab, Utah, for example, she recalls lecturing her kids about the grave impact the Supreme Court will have on their generation (“Your prologue will be an epitaph”), though their worries turned out to be more immediate (“Are we still having hot dogs?”). Kendzior keeps her alarmism mostly in check as she visits hidden gems across America, including the hoodoos of the Kansas plains and a temporary lake caused by heavy rains in Death Valley. It adds up to poignant portrait of life in the Trump era. Agent: Robert Lecker, Robert Lecker Agency. (Apr.)