Divine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America

by Timothy E. O'Grady

In 1973, at the age of 22, Timothy O'Grady left America for Europe. He had grown up through the time of moonshots and protest marches, new music and unprecedented economic expansion, and of hopes for a new society, a new democracy, and a new kind of man. For the next 30 years he lived in and wrote about Europe. As he did, the American counterculture crashed, Ronald Reagan came and went, wars were declared, and the country was attacked by air. Much of the world began to look at America in a new way, wondering what had happened to it and where it was going. Among them was Timothy O'Grady, and he decided to go back and investigate. Following in the footsteps of such Europeans as de Tocqueville, Dickens, and Simone de Beauvoir, and such Americans as Henry Miller, Kerouac, Steinbeck, and Woody Guthrie, he went out onto the American road, traveling more than 15,000 miles through 35 states. He met academics, the homeless, war veterans, political activists, New Orleans rappers, billionaires, novelists, and a Ku Klux Klansman. A Yale legal historian told him why there are a million lawyers in America, a Chicago broker how executive pay is set and how the lobbying system works in Washington, and a Salvadorean gang member how life is on the streets of East Los Angeles. In every bar he stopped in, it seemed, there was a story of American life to be heard. Using history, memoir, state-of-the-nation analysis and a novelist's skill at evoking places and people, Divine Magnetic Lands presents a picture of America as it evolved and how it is at the beginning of the 21st century.

544 pages, Hardcover

First published August 3, 2006

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

A divine portrait of alienation and longing.

Among other things, this book contains a magnificent interview with Studs Terkel in the section on Chicago.

[Colmd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, it draws you into the places & predicaments these people are experiencing.