Getting outside and meeting people might reveal we’re more alike than different

When Lauren Hough set off across America in 2023 in her self-refitted second-hand Dodge van, she had the twin goals of circling the US and not traumatising her dog, Woody Guthrie. As readers setting off across a deeply polarised nation in the company of a six-foot left-wing lesbian who is no fan of the ‘orange billionaire’ or the people who voted for him, we expect that her implicit aim is to illustrate the failings of an America with whose current state the author is clearly at odds. Hough...