Getting a Life

As a national writer for The Associated Press, Leslie Dreyfous set out to investigate America's often obsessive pursuit of happiness in an ever more complicated world. What she found over and over again was tremendous human dignity, regardless of class, color, geography or life history. She also found tremendous disconnection and yearning for a sense of home; a sense of longing that resonated with her own journey as a single career woman navigating her early 30's. If the years following World War II offered a boundless hope and optimism that equates with childhood, more recent generations have come of age in what amounts to a more complex "national adolescence." Growing up is never easy. This is a book about confronting the challenge and what it means to stand up for American ideals, both civic and personal. It's a book about learning that "Home does not come in a bolt from heaven, nor is it some new gimmick on sale down at the mall. It's the way we live in the world every day, the plot of land that, side-by-side with others, we painstakingly tend."