Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey Hardcover – August 23, 2011

I don't want to over-praise this. No one can tell how much staying power 'Lost In America' will have.But here's my gut: I grew up on Hunter S. Thompson and Robert Pirsig and some quieter (and maybe better) books along the same line.This book will be remembered in the same way. Or if it isn't, it'll be like the great, obscure record you tried to get your friends to listen to way back when because you knew how good it was, and 30, 40 years on you discover there were people all across the country who heard the same thing you did.I read the whole thing in a couple of sittings. The central part of the book is about Detroit, and Buzzell writes the city so well I felt like I was there, was in it with him.Only thing is - I didn't want the book to be over so soon. I wanted to know if he went back to Detroit, what else he figured out there.Scott A.

Some of the other reviews puzzle me. Some reviewer give this book a lower rating, because they don't like how much the author/persona drinks. How else can a wanderer see the struggling underside of America if he or she doesn't drink, and probably drink to excess. This is a superb book that reveals our common humanity and also shows the evolution of the author or persona. Also the authors of most good travel and wandering writing become their own persona. Paul Theroux is a prime example. If you are the kind of person who dreams of going on the road, this is a superb guide and memoir.

Overall worth reading. I found his adventures in Detroit to be interesting. At the end of the road, it was a little too superficial. It needed another layer of analysis or character observation to make it great.

This was not nearly as compelling as his previous book My War. He was trying to sound like Kerouac, but instead, he sounded like a drunk loser.

This is powerfully and honestly written - the kind of book Jack Kerouac would have written were he a child of the late 20th century!

Very well written, highly recommend anything written by Colby

Colby Buzzell takes us with him on a road trip through some of the most downtrodden parts of America at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. America is much different now than it was when Jack Kerouac - whose work, in part, inspired Buzzell's road trip - published his iconic "On The Road" in the early 1950s. In fact, I was fortunate to see the long, one paragraph scroll of "On The Road" that Kerouac typed up in 1951 when it went on exhibit at the Ransom Center in Austin, Texas a few years back. America was full of promise in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The country was a manufacturing powerhouse generating jobs and providing economic opportunity for its citizens. Now, fast forward sixty odd years and Colby Buzzell experiences the reality of a nation that has lost its competitive edge and now faces a future as a second rate provider of service jobs and a first rate exporter of military hardware as it becomes a service nation. Nearly half of the book is given over to Colby's experiences in Detroit, Michigan. Once an economic power house and the world center of automobile manufacturing, Detroit is now full of derelict buildings and derelict people and Colby meets many of these people and shares his encounters with us. He relates his drives on lonely roads and through urban slums. He speaks to us of bars in tough sections of town and of flop houses and cheap hotels and of the people he meets there and his conversations with them. He learns things about life on the rough edge as he walks downtrodden city blocks, faces fear in abandoned buildings and walking past street corners where seemingly tough guys with little to lose hang out. He goes inside closed factories and "no trespassing" posted facilities - once proud sources of jobs and products made in America - now empty shells of better times. He finds people in those buildings salvaging copper, doing what they can to try to earn their daily bread. He tells their story using unpolished language of the streets. Unless you know such people yourself, you are unlikely to learn the things that Colby learned.Colby is somewhat mixed up himself and trying to sort out his own life and he openly shares his thoughts with us. He is not afraid to be vulnerable and to expose his inner thoughts and fears to the reader. His failures are set forth. Somewhere I read that a great writer cannot be afraid to let the reader inside his mind, to not hide his fears and problems from the reader. So, this author - in being open about himself and his difficulties in having a strong family life - is also able to share the things he hears from others and to help us to learn how those others see their world. And, their world could one day be anyone's world. All you need to do is lose your job, run out of money, not be able access adequate economic or medical support and you too may be one of those who are lost in America. After reading this book, I have come to take a more empathetic view of the people who are suffering through our current recession. Or, who have suffered the stress of combat and who are trying to cope with PTSD.The author shares that he has lived in The Tenderloin in San Francisco which is a good "boot camp" for his road trip that visits similar places in other parts of America. He did not seek out the prosperous people or the high end neighborhoods in our country. Or inspiring vistas and tourist traps. His is a journey that few would undertake for recreation. But, through this book, you can join him vicariously in visiting the risky places and meeting people who live in those places and who the well off might only see anonymously moving across their field of vision without registering for more than a moment if at all. At the same time, the unique American viewpoint and "get it done" philosophy may spell better times. The author says, at one point, "If I was ever going to operate a fully automatic machine gun in a combat zone again, my wish to God would be that my ammo bearer be an individual born and raised in Detroit." Hard times now may breed a stronger America in the future. A good read for those who like hard core travel stories. I wish the author well.

If you have previously read my war you will notice how good Colby Buzzell is to tell stories..and this one it's about America..