It is one thing to study the fall of democracy, another to have it hit your homeland―and yet another to raise children as it happens. The Last American Road Trip is one family’s journey to the most beautiful, fascinating, and bizarre places in the U.S. during one of its most tumultuous eras. As Kendzior works as a journalist chronicling political turmoil, she becomes determined that her young children see America before it’s too late. So Kendzior, her husband, and the kids hit the road―again and again.
Starting from Missouri, the family drives across America in every direction as cataclysmic events ― the rise of autocracy, political and technological chaos, and the pandemic ― reshape American life. They explore Route 66, national parks, historical sites and Americana icons as Kendzior contemplates love for country in a broken heartland. Together, the family watches the landscape of the United States―physical, environmental, social, political―transform through the car window.
Part memoir, part political history, The Last American Road Trip is one mother’s promise to her children that their country will be there for them in the future ― even though at times she struggles to believe it herself.
About the author
Sarah Kendzior, PhD ’12, is the author of the The View From Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight and They Knew, a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. She holds a PhD in anthropology from WashU, where she studied authoritarian regimes of the former Soviet Union. She has spent a decade writing about the decline of the United States for various publications around the world.
Read an interview with Kendzior in the October 2022 edition of WashU Magazine.