Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and author Beverly Gage for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

I enjoy road trips a great deal. While I am more of a stop and smell the roses type of traveler, my family often just wants to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. I’ve made a few solo road trips, stopping to see the sights on my way. This is why This Land is Your Land intrigued me so much.

Beverly Gage is a historian and author. She loves road trips as well and takes them with a historical bent. Over a couple of years, she made road trips to various historical sites across the United States and chronicles them in this book. Let me say straight off that if you have a problem with real history, rather than the fairy tale we’re often taught in school, then you won’t enjoy This Land is Your Land. It definitely embraces the complete history of the United States, warts and all.

Despite efforts to the contrary, it’s become quite evident that slavery and the people who were forced into it were a huge part of the story of the United States. Gage confronts this head-on at the homes of some of the past Presidents as well as in Charleston, SC. While visiting Tennessee and the home of President Andrew Jackson, she delves into the Trail of Tears and what Indian Removal was really about. This segues into the West, where she visits the Crazy Horse monument and Little Bighorn.

This Land is Your Land also brings up more modern history, such as the time Gage stays overnight in an abandoned missile silo in the Southwest. She covers some of the nuclear testing grounds out there as well. I learned there is a historic site where one of the Japanese internment camps was during World War II. I never would have thought to look for that, figuring everything had been bulldozed to try and make people forget. That’s one added to my bucket list. Disneyland is here near the end, as its opening was a revolutionary event for vacationers.

It felt like Gage covered nearly all of the United States. The information is presented chronologically, so earlier in the book is mostly the East Coast, where the original Colonies were, and it slowly expands across the continent. I found it engaging. Gage has a tone in the book that almost feels like some of these places, like the missile silo, are a guilty pleasure her peers would never dream of visiting. The narrator, Gabra Zackman, does a great job capturing this. I found listening to her a pleasure.

I wish I had picked up This Land is Your Land prior to our 3-week stay in Alabama this past spring. We were there for the birth of grandchild #4, and had a lot of free time. I didn’t think there was much to see in Montgomery or Selma. After listening to this book, I want to go back (my son is being moved from Fort Benning, so it won’t be happening). There were many historic Civil Rights sites that I missed out on.

Gage writes about her son accompanying her to several places, and also talks about how she dragged the family on history-based road trips earlier in life. This is still my motivation with my own son and also my grandchildren. I took my oldest granddaughter on a road trip last year, and This Land is Your Land gave me an idea for a few more we might take. It also whetted my appetite for the West, someplace I really want to spend time. If you accept the darker side of American history and want to bear witness to it, I think you’ll get a lot out of the book. It presents the deeper history of our country that many people don’t want to see, and gives directions for seeing these places.