It was worth leaving the USSR for America half a century ago to write this wonderful book. America is a country seen through the eyes of a writer raised on Russian literature and enamored with American prose. In America, everything is simultaneously familiar and alien, and it is this dual focus that gives birth to a personal, poignant chronicle of discovery—from Texas to New Jersey, from the French Quarter to Indian reservations. Genis shares America as a love story, in which delight and irony, recognition and bewilderment go hand in hand. And if you think you already know the States well, America invites you to take another look.