Product Description

From the bestselling editors of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup comes an American road trip in book form: original writing on all 50 states by 50 of our finest novelists, journalists, and essayists

Inspired by the example of the legendary WPA American Guide series of the 1930s and '40s, now 50 of our foremost writers have produced original pieces of reportage and memoir that capture the 50 states in our time, creating a fresh portrait of America as it lives and breathes today.

At turns poignant and funny, and always insightful, these 50 writers tell us something lasting and revealing about each state through personal memory or contemporary reporting that captures the essential qualities that make each state its own. With an array of revealing facts and figures comparing the 50 states in a range of surprising measures (toothlessness, military enlistment, suicide), State by State is more than an anthology: It is a classic American road movie in book form.

Featuring original writing on all fifty states

Alabama by George Packer
Alaska by Paul Greenberg
Arizona by Lydia Millet
Arkansas by Kevin Brockmeier
California by William T. Vollmann
Colorado by Benjamin Kunkel
Connecticut by Rick Moody
Delaware by Craig Taylor
Florida by Joshua Ferris
Georgia by Ha Jin
Hawaii by Tara Bray Smith
Idaho by Anthony Doerr
Illinois by Dave Eggers
Indiana by Susan Choi
Iowa by Dagoberto Gilb
Kansas by Jim Lewis
Kentucky by John Jeremiah Sullivan
Louisiana by Joshua Clark
Maine by Heidi Julavits
Maryland by Myla Goldberg
Massachusetts by John Hodgman
Michigan by Mohammed Naseehu Ali
Minnesota by Philip Connors
Mississippi by Barry Hannah
Missouri by Jacki Lyden
Montana by Sarah Vowell
Nebraska by Alexander Payne
Nevada by Charles Bock
New Hampshire by Will Blythe
New Jersey by Anthony Bourdain
New Mexico by Ellery Washington
New York by Jonathan Franzen
North Carolina by Randall Kenan
North Dakota by Louise Erdrich
Ohio by Susan Orlean
Oklahoma by S.E. Hinton
Oregon by Joe Sacco
Pennsylvania by Andrea Lee
Rhode Island by Jhumpa Lahiri
South Carolina by Jack Hitt
South Dakota by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Tennessee by Ann Patchett
Texas by Cristina Henríquez
Utah by David Rakoff
Vermont by Alison Bechdel
Virginia by Tony Horwitz
Washington by Carrie Brownstein
West Virginia by Jayne Anne Phillips
Wisconsin by Daphne Beal
Wyoming by Alexandra Fuller

and an afterword on Washington, D.C.: A Conversation with Edward P. Jones

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9416 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-01
• Released on: 2008-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 608 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Without leaving home or spending a cent on gas, readers of this book can enjoy a scenic view of the entire U.S. that is as familiar as it is disorienting. Weiland, deputy editor of the Paris Review, and Wilsey, editor-at-large for McSweeney's, have gathered a group of 50 disparate voices to explore not just their experience in America, but the way each state was presented in the American Guide series of the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, in which the Works Project Administration (WPA), as part of F.D.R's New Deal, put more than 6000 American writers to work creating a portrait of this country. The editors wanted to make a book inspired by the ideals behind the WPA Guides but they also wanted something more personal, more eccentric, and more partial. Obvious heavy-hitters—Dave Eggars (Illinois), Rick Moody (Connecticut), Jhumpa Lahiri (Rhode Island), Barry Hannah (Mississippi), William T. Vollmann (California)—are included, as well as some wonderful surprises. Alison Bechdel's illustrated story about her life after moving to Vermont brilliantly combines personal history with historical fact, as does Charles Bock's essay on growing up and working in his parent's Las Vegas pawnshop. Mohammed Naseehu Ali's tale of life in Michigan, after moving there from Ghana as a teen, illuminates what the unconditionally generous Michigan nature shares with the traditions of his own Hausa-Islamic culture. And Franzen's imaginary interview with the state of New York is perhaps the high point among this collection of beguiling summations of something all the writers share: a love-hate relationship with how their chosen state has changed and evolved during the course of their lives. (Sept.)
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About the Author

Matt Weiland is the Deputy Editor of The Paris Review. He has been an editor at Granta, The Baffler and The New Press, and he oversaw a documentary radio unit at NPR. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Observer, The Nation and The New Republic. He is the co-editor, with Sean Wilsey, of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup and, with Thomas Frank, of Commodify Your Dissent: The Business of Culture in the New Gilded Age. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

Customer Reviews

State by State: A Panaromic Portrait of America
Not the content anticipated. Did not enjoy at all, in fact did not read over 50%.

State by State
My "Landscape and Literature" professor from college would love this book. A project such as "State by State" - 50 separate essays by 50 disparate writers - is bound to leave some people out in the cold. Nobody can possibly cover every possible area of a state in a book like this, nor should they have to. I liked the approach taken as the writers wrote about the personal, the political and made it into something unique.

Some essays are very thorough: Jon "I'm a PC" Hodgman's essay on Massachusetts acknowledges that there is a region west of Worcester and east of the Berkshires. Some essays are very brief: SE Hinton's well-written look at Oklahoma only made me wnat more from her. And some essays are exactly what the author does best: the wonderful Alison Bechdel's look at Vermont is done in her usual style and is all-encompassing to her state's eccentric history.

Underneath it all though, there is a sadness to this book. As the United States becomes a country of big box stores, strip malls, McMansions, suburban sprawl, highways and pharmaceutical factories, we lose the landscape that made our regions unique. The theme of change and what we are losing is especially prevalent on the essays on the South and the West. Only the New England writers seem somewhat assured of their areas, perhaps as aresult of their areas having already lost their industries decades ago. "State by State" is a good book, and a sobering one.

State by State
I'm enjoying State by State. I'm not reading the stories in order, but rather dipping into the states that I'm most interested in. It's a collection of essays, so you probably won't agree with some of them. This is a great way to catch up on some old favorite authors and discover new ones, both who to read and who to avoid. I lent it to another librarian, who didn't think she would like it, but she raved about it. I'm keeping this volume in the car and find it great for reading when I have to wait somewhere. I enjoyed the demographic tables in the back. It is called "State by State" so it is fair, I guess, that it doesn't include U.S. Territories like Puerto Rico and American Samoa, but I think it is weaker for it.