The New York Times is time-travelling, Going Down the Road, revisiting states and landmarks covered by the American Guide Series of books, produced between 1935 and 1943 by the Federal Writers Project. Thousands of writers – including Studs Terkel, Saul Bellow and Nelson Algren – were sent out to pen what turned into a collective […]

The New York Times asked several writers this week to reflect on the consequences of “really expensive” (ie, by British standards, still cheap) fuel. Michael Paterniti waved goodbye and, in his view, good riddance to the great American road trip. Of course he’s already had his fun. He’s the author of the wonderfully titled Driving […]

My colleague Paul Mansfield, reviewing a new book about the States (Divine Magnetic Lands by Timothy O’Grady) finds evidence within it that American society is not as litigious as we think, and that Americans sue each other no more than they did 30 years ago.
Maybe, but American lawyers do put a damper on pretty well […]

What’s the longest you’ve been delayed at an airport? Long enough to write a book? That’s the premise of Dear American Airlines, the debut novel of Jonathan Miles, reviewed in The New York Times by Richard Russo – though I’ve just realised you can only read that if you’re a registered user of the NY […]

Arnold Schwarzenegger has suggested that immigrants to the United States should watch only English-language TV so that they can understand the language and news of their home state.
  On the contrary, argues Joe Mathews in a piece in the Washington Post this week: political leaders should be encouraging Americans to switch off English-language TV and […]

“You haven’t been to visit us for a while, sir,” the immigration officer said, flicking through my passport last week before letting me into Seattle.
I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t been made to feel overly welcome on the last few trips, even when I was simply transiting the US en route to Latin America. […]

There’s an excellent piece by Jonathan Raban in the London Review of Books on Obama and Clinton:
So we’re down to arguing over the character and style of Clinton and Obama, rather than – tut-tut! – ‘talking about the issues’. But in this case, character and style are issues because they supply the best available clues […]

George Bush’s ways with the language are beginning to rub off on his Secretary of State. Yesterday, after it emerged that State Department staff had improperly accessed electronic passport files of the three American presidential candidates, Condoleezza Rice declared that she was going to “stay on top of it and get to the bottom of […]

There are passengers who always manage to stretch their legs or get to the loo just before the captain says “We’re in for a spot of turbulence — please fasten your seatbelts.” How do they know it’s coming?
  If they’re flying with United Airlines, they’re probably tuning into Channel 9. According to a story in […]

Now that our back pages are available on the website, there’s no excuse for freelances who approach us with stories we have recently published. We ran a piece on jazz in New York as recently as November. Mind you, the writer who sent the following note wouldn’t have been commissioned anyway. The reasons should be […]