This Land Is Your Land. By Beverly Gage. Simon and Schuster; 352 pages; $30. Oneworld; £22
《这片土地是你的土地》。作者：贝弗莉·盖奇。西蒙与舒斯特出版社；352页；30美元。寰宇出版社；22英镑。
AMERICANS drive a lot. That habit has some detrimental(有害的，不利的) effects, from air pollution and immense car parks to an inflated reverence(过度的崇拜) for Jack Kerouac(杰克·凯鲁亚克，美国作家). But it also has benefits, such as the American road trip, used by generations of parents to annoy their captive children and by novelists to tell stories of new beginnings (“The Grapes of Wrath(《愤怒的葡萄》，美国小说)”) and catastrophic endings (“The Road(《路》，美国小说)”).
美国人开车很多。这个习惯有一些负面影响，从空气污染和巨大的停车场，到对杰克·凯鲁亚克的过度崇拜。但它也有好处，比如美国公路旅行——被一代代父母用来惹恼他们被困在车里的孩子，也被小说家用来讲述新开始（《愤怒的葡萄》）和灾难性结局（《路》）的故事。
In a charming new book, Beverly Gage—a historian at Yale, who won a Pulitzer prize for her biography of J. Edgar Hoover—drives through American history. From George Washington to Ronald Reagan, and from Philadelphia to California, she roam(漫步，漫游)s among historic homes, monuments, parks and presidential libraries “in an attempt to(试图，为了) explore, if not reconcile(调和，使和解), the greatest tensions of American history”.
在一本迷人的新书中，耶鲁大学历史学家、因撰写J·埃德加·胡佛传记而获普利策奖的贝弗莉·盖奇，驱车穿越美国历史。从乔治·华盛顿到罗纳德·里根，从费城到加州，她在历史故居、纪念碑、公园和总统图书馆之间徜徉，“试图探索——如果不能调和——美国历史中最重大的紧张关系”。