American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed
Isaac Fitzgerald writes with a folksy wit that might come off as an affectation were he not so searingly honest about his own shortcomings and the fact that he’s far from figuring it all out ... Roaming from past to present and back to past, from self-analysis to interrogation of America’s tireless appetite for self-mythology, he walks a path uniquely his own ... Fitzgerald has a gift for intelligent, gimlet-eyed straight shooting, for writing with a bared soul but minimal ego (he does have some ego; he’s a writer after all). In times often defined by cynicism and trolling, he doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. American Rambler isn’t a diagnosis of how America went wrong. It’s a suggestion in practice of how to overcome by putting one foot in front of the other.
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Bouncing between the larger-than-life mythology of Appleseed and the idiosyncratic but human foibles of Chapman, Fitzgerald builds a nuanced portrait of the man and the places he traveled ... Claiming no legendary status himself, Fitzgerald is a most excellent tour guide, mixing history with anecdote, Chapman’s tangled story with his own somewhat tortured but always fascinating tale.
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He candidly exposes the tension between myth and reality, revealing how history is often transformed into myths, complete with heroes. As he observes, 'Like all things human, history is flawed, and forgetful, and at times overly optimistic' American Rambler ultimately becomes less about retracing one legendary man’s footsteps and more about examining the ground beneath them.
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