Setting out on a winding road trip, travel writer Paul Theroux discovers a region of architectural and artistic wonders, incomparable music, mouth-watering cuisine—and also some of the worst schools, medical care, housing, and unemployment rates in the nation.
Theroux pulls no punches in his quest to understand this overlooked margin of American life, finding here, yes, a place oftentimes more Third World than First, but also finding in the land and people a dignity that surprises even himself, the seasoned world traveler.
Although the majority of the book has all the hallmarks of a brilliant Therouxvian travel tale, a few misjudgments poke through and threaten his authority. It is not Theroux who has changed, but us: a white man writing what he thinks about a place as racially charged as the South is uncomfortable, and his tone comes off more as a crotchety old man with outdated views on race and gender rather than a keen observer qualified to write about the complexities of the South.
