Do You Feel Like Our Country is Fracturing?

A man navigates the deep divisions in America today and discovers that sometimes change can start by finding common ground with your neighbors in this immersive account by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thank You for Your Service and The Good Soldiers.

“Finkel’s account is poetic, profound, and irresistibly page-turning.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse

As this powerful book begins, Brent Cummings finds himself coping with the feeling that the country he loves is fracturing in front of his eyes. An Iraq war veteran, raised to believe in a vision of America that values fairness, honesty, and respect for others, Cummings is increasingly surprised by the behavior and beliefs of others, and engulfed by the fear, anger, and confusion that is sweeping through his beloved country as he tries to hold on to his values and his hope for America’s future.

David Finkel, known for his unique, in-depth reporting, spent fourteen years deep inside Brent Cummings’s world to create this intimate and vivid portrait of a man’s life, work, family, community, his thoughts, and his quest for connection as America becomes more divided. Cummings was one of the unforgettable figures in Finkel’s The Good Soldiers, a book about which The New York Times stated, “Finkel has made art out of a defining moment in history. You will be able to take this book down from the shelf years from now and say: This is what happened. This is what it felt like.”

An American Dreamer illuminates, with the deepest empathy, the feelings and lives of many people in America today, and it is a brilliant chronicle of one person’s everyday experiences of frustration, confusion, and hope.

David Finkel is a journalist and author whose latest book, "An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country", will be published In February 2024 by Random House. His first book, "The Good Soldiers," was based on a year he spent embedded with a U.S. Army infantry battalion during the Iraq war. The best-selling book was named by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of 2009. For his second book, "Thank You For Your Service," Finkel wrote about some of the battalion’s most injured soldiers as they and their families tried to recover from what war had done to all of them, physically, psychologically, and morally. The book was named a top ten book of 2013 by the Washington Post and a notable book of the year by the New York Times, and it was the basis for a feature-length film that was produced by DreamWorks Pictures and released by Universal Pictures in October 2017. In addition to writing books, Finkel is an editor and writer for the Washington Post. His awards and honors include a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.