Reviewed by Lindsay Bennett

Impressed by America’s semiquincentennial (2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence), Pulitzer-prize profitable writer Beverly Gage provides us This Land is Your Land: A Highway Journey By U.S. Historical past (Simon & Schuster; April 2026).

Guided by her perspective as a historian (Gage teaches American Historical past at Yale) and fueled by her love of a great street journey, Gage units out on a journey of epic proportions, visiting 13 completely different locations in pursuit of answering a query as soon as posed by Benjamin Franklin, particularly: Is the solar rising or setting over the republic? To that finish, Gage — largely alone, however often with a journey companion in tow — traverses a few of this nation’s most storied locations. Her goal is probably much less to reply Franklin’s query, and extra to discover why it stays one.

Removed from a dry, educational textual content, This Land is Your Land strikes a conversational tone, like a buddy who’s telling you about her experiences and observations at varied historic websites over dinner — that’s, in case your buddy occurred to be a top-of-her area historian. Gage brings readers alongside as she visits a number of predictable websites, like Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, the Alamo in Texas, and Charleston, South Carolina (the primary metropolis to secede), together with locations far much less well-known, however no much less fascinating.

To that, she mixes in anecdotes about her personal historical past, like visits she made to historic websites as a toddler, closing the space between author and reader. I used to be instantly introduced again to my very own childhood area journeys to California’s Spanish Missions (and I can simply think about a dialog with Gage about these). Gage presents tantalizing particulars of assorted characters in American historical past to whet the appetites of readers, as is the case in her Michigan chapter, which paints an image of America’s labor motion — together with an in depth and finally unflattering portrait of Henry Ford.

The chapter I discovered most enthralling, and which I believe finest captures the American paradox that Gage returns to repeatedly was, “Is This America?” which focuses on Mississippi and Alabama. Throughout Gage’s go to to the area, she drives alongside a lot of the Civil Rights Path, starting in Alabama, driving west by Mississippi and Arkansas, then in direction of Memphis. She describes her journey, and weaves in highlights about vital occasions, in addition to outstanding civil rights icons, together with Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Rosa Parks, and Medgar Evers.

Whilst a reader well-versed in that a part of American historical past, I used to be glad to be taught some new issues from Gage. Past the information, although, what makes this chapter (and quite a few others) stand out is Gage’s willingness to probe past the fundamentals. She notes that a lot of the messaging alongside the Civil Rights Path emphasizes America’s “progress,” then pauses to think about the strain between that message and the present-day actuality in a lot of the area, which faces “unemployment, poverty, resegregation, air pollution and inhabitants loss.” The “comforting narrative” of progress is known as into query by Montgomery based mostly lawyer and activist, Bryan Stevnson, whose perspective and work Gage highlights on this chapter.

Gage is just not trying to symbolize a complete historical past of the USA in This Land is Your Land, nor does she ship a one-to-one ratio of America’s finest and worst. As an alternative, the writer offers a thoughtfully curated exploration of a few of America’s most poignant historic websites and a way of studying extra of our previous and, maybe within the course of, gaining a deeper understanding of our current. Gage is just not selling a “Nice” America (although she shines a light-weight on myriad excessive factors within the nation’s historical past), however neither does she sanitize America’s most shameful chapters (Gage, for instance, precisely describes the Manzanar Battle Relocation Heart, the place 1000’s of Japanese – most of them Americans — have been held throughout World Battle II as a jail, “not a ‘camp’”).

In the long run, Gage reminds readers that, when attempting to reply the central query (Is the solar rising or setting on America?), it typically proves exhausting to know at any given second. She acknowledges that America’s historical past is commonly deeply troubling and that most of the latest developments are “alarming.” Nonetheless, she stays grounded within the data that the worry of decline or collapse that permeates nearly each period typically conjures up reflection and a redoubling of efforts to enhance issues. Throughout her go to to the Lyndon Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, Gage noticed a quote by LBJ, which described historical past as “the joy of turning into — all the time turning into, attempting, probing, falling, resting, and attempting once more.” I’m inclined to agree with Gage that Johnson’s phrases precisely body “about the perfect we will do.”

This Land is Your Land is the right companion to anybody inclined to make a journey by a few of America’s most fascinating historical past.