Chasing the Red, White and Blue
A journey in Tocqueville's footsteps through contemporary America
by David Cohen
Overview
From Bookcloseouts.com
Using
Democracy in America as his model, acclaimed British and South African journalist David Cohen retraces Alexis de Tocqueville's journey around the country to observe how the balance between the rich and the poor has changed over the past 150 years. Traveling from New York to the Ohio River Valley, the deep South, California, and finally to Washington, D.C., Cohen captures an America where inequality is balanced by unquenchable hope.
My thoughts
This book should be required reading for all Americans.
Yes, I feel that strongly about it. Whether you agree or disagree with the findings, it's something that should be read and pondered by every person living in America. It's a great starting place for discussions that need to take place in our country.
The book was dated even as I read it - it takes place pre-911. It takes place when America is finding itself with a budget surplus. (Can I even remember that in today's economy?) That only serves to ponder more seriously the direction our country is headed to determine if indeed that is the direction we want to be headed and should be headed, or if we need to change course. Overall it's an uplifting and positive story about the American spirit, but the responsibility it makes us face can also be quite troubling to the soul.
I plan to buy several of these books to give as gifts, and I'm pushing this book on anyone I think I stand a chance of getting to read it! Of all the books I've read in the past couple of years, this one is at the top of the must-read list.
Favorite Passage
It strikes me that even in a democracy with apparent social equality, the working poor and their like are invisible to most of us.
I take out my notepad and scribble a shortlist of the people I have done business with that day. I try to recall. There is:
the Red & Tan Line bus driver
the New York City subway-token salesman
the Pennsylvania Station ticket clerk
the Roy Rogers fast-food cashier
the Roy Rogers cleaning person
the woman checking tickets at the top of the train platform
the onboard conductor
the onboard buffet-cart vendor
Aparet from the bus driver who often transports me to and from my American base in Rockland County, New York, I cannot recall what a single one of them looks like.
