Are we there yet?

There you are: four little words almost guaranteed to raise a father’s blood pressure, especially if they were whined more than once. Family vacations and long road trips were hard for a kid if you had no patience; being forced to learn was no fun. So read the new book, “This Land is Your Land” by Beverly Gage, and see what you missed.

Henry Ford “hated big cities.”

Still, he knew he’d benefit from seeing the innovations showcased at the World’s Fair of 1893, so he swallowed his reluctance and traveled to Chicago. There, he spotted a gasoline-powered two-cylinder engine, and he figured he could really do something with it. Fifteen years later, he started selling the Model T because “he believed that… Americans could get out and see their country’s wonders with just a little bit of gas and gumption.”

That’s the spirit historian Beverly Gage had when she decided to visit our country’s historical sites. She started in Philadelphia, her hometown and the place where the Constitution was written and where George Washington brought his slaves before rotating them back to Mount Vernon, thus skirting a national law.

In Virginia, Gage learned that you cannot tour Jefferson’s Monticello “without learning some basic facts about the Hemings family.” Sally Hemings “may now be one of the most famous women in American history,” but there are no known portraits of her.

Gage visited Nashville, and Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, which features “startlingly little about his Indian policy…” She stopped at the Alamo, where Davy Crockett — who was once a Tennesseean — died fighting. She went to New York, where “antislavery cultures” thrived. She visited Fort Sumter, South Carolina, where the Civil War began. She spent time at Little Big Horn, toured a Buffalo Bill museum, learned about UFOs, and followed the Civil Rights movement trail.

Overall, says Gage, “history is not confined to certain places at certain times. It’s in street names and family stories, shopping malls and local accents — in who lives where and why.”

Remember taking a school field trip when you a kid? They were fun, out-of-the-ordinary, and you learned a thing or two — which is the kind of vibe you’ll get from reading “This Land is Your Land.”

Take a trip with author Beverly Gage along, and you’ll get a fresh look at American history and the places that made it. Buckle up, because she’s honest in the lessons here: there’s bad history along with good history in her narrative, and some controversy to think about. Keeping it lively, Gage adds some of her own memories and personal assessments to her findings, asides that are funny, and comments on the sites and the way history is perceived today. That all leads to a great summer trip you can take without ever leaving your living room.

America’s semiquincentennial is coming up soon, and “This Land is Your Land” is a great book to read, in anticipation. Grab it, dig in, and you’ll feel like you’re there already.

This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip through U.S. History” by Beverly Gage
c.2026, Simon & Schuster
$30.00
325 pages