An American Dreamer

November 15, 2023
An intimate look at American lives in fraught times. Washington Post editor and writer Finkel picks up from his last book, Thank You for Your Service, to offer an immersive portrayal of contemporary America, from Election Day 2016 through Election Day 2020, through the eyes of Iraqi war veteran Brent Cummings, his family, and his neighbors in a town in Georgia. Cummings, born in Mississippi, is aware that as "a white male pickup-driving ex-soldier living in a Georgia county where in 2016 Donald Trump received 71 percent of the vote," he might be assumed to share his community's political views. His neighbor, for example, professes "no doubt that pedophilia existed in Hollywood and that Satanists existed within the Democratic party. He also had no doubt a deep state existed that was intent on overthrowing Trump." But Cummings and his wife are offended by Trump's lies and vulgarity and by the racism and xenophobia that his rhetoric has incited. "The country he had spent most of his life defending," Cummings thought, "was being overtaken by something he didn't fully understand." Finkel portrays Cummings as "a man in the middle, a man who throughout his life had been searching for some sense of larger purpose and meaning." The military fulfilled that sense of purpose, but he returned beset by terrifying nightmares and gnawing questions. His wife, too, is unsettled both by the divisiveness she observes and by family pressures: Their college-age daughter shows signs of anxiety; a younger daughter, with Down syndrome, has suddenly exhibited selective mutism; and her dying mother needs her care. Comparing the U.S. with his wartime experiences in the Middle East, Cummings concludes that Americans were not "a rageful people. Some were, but most wanted no part of it." Still, he wonders, "What were their sacrifices for?" A sharply observed depiction of a divided country.

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November 1, 2023
Pulitzer Prize-winner and MacArthur fellow Finkel looks at our polarized and fractured country through the eyes of a man he first wrote about in The Good Soldiers (2009) and with whom he's continued to work. Though not a celebrity, Brent Cummings is far from ordinary. Colonel Cummings served for 28 years in the U.S. Army, spending time in Iraq and Jerusalem and as a professor of military science and a counselor at the University of North Georgia. Here Finkel presents immersive, engaging, and incredibly well-written reporting on Cummings' frank observations about friends, neighbors, and passers-by. Cummings watches Donald Trump stoke and amplify racism and hate, and questions which is the real America. The America that Cummings believes in is a place of decency and respect for others, but as the calendar crawls inexorably towards Election Day 2020, he sees more people around him falling into Trump's world of selfishness and brutishness. Finkel beautifully captures this contentious moment in our history. Focused in perspective but enormous in impact, An American Dreamer perfectly encapsulates life in a divided country.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2023

Pulitzer-winning journalist Finkel (Thank You for Your Service) aptly showcases political divisions in the United States via this nuanced account of four years (2016-20) in the life of Iraq War veteran and Georgia resident Brent Cummings, whom Finkel has followed for 15 years. Readers come to know Brent, his wife Laura, and their neighbor Michael, and the varied opinions of all three about the nation's future. Brent, who has PTSD and is nearing retirement after 28 years in the army, is offended by the politics of Donald Trump and wishes that good would prevail in the world. Laura juggles caregiving for their daughter, who has Down syndrome, and for her mother. Michael, a MAGA enthusiast with paralysis in both of his arms and legs, is full of fear about the deep state. The book's compassionate depictions of Brent, Laura, and Michael are so well-drawn that it reads like a novel, but the profiles are real and empathetic. VERDICT A beautifully rendered, sensitively told story about a veteran who returns home to a nation where many things are changing or already altered forever. A good choice for public libraries.--Caren Nichter

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 22, 2024
Finkel (Thank You for Your Service), a staff writer for the Washington Post, examines America’s political, social, and cultural divides in this immersive profile of Brent Cummings, an Iraq War veteran and instructor in military science at the University of North Georgia. Drawing on conversations with Cummings and his friends and family, primarily between 2016 and 2021, Finkel finds that the unifying belief among those he interviews—across the political spectrum—is the idea that the country is fracturing. This is especially true of Cummings, who wrestles with the traumatic social upheaval he witnessed in Iraq and who believes that a similarly traumatic state of social conflict is besetting the country during the presidency of Donald Trump, whom Cummings opposes while living and working in a solidly pro-Trump community. Meanwhile, Cummings and his family face down a series of personal challenges, which Finkel casts against national events. For example, a late chapter recounts Cummings’s feelings of isolation and ruminations on political violence during a 2018 stint in Israel, where he worked training Palestinian Authority security forces; Finkel’s prosodic narration has Cummings reflecting on Trump’s calls for a U.S.-Mexico border wall in the shadow of the West Bank barrier wall. It’s an evocative contribution to the shelf on what ails America in the age of Trump.