Pessimist Gen X Yale Professor Takes A Selective Road Trip Through America And American History. Understood through this lens, this book isn’t as terrible as it could have been. It is still quite politically oriented in the expected directions from a Yale professor, and its treatment of history is quite surface level and routine, but it is also at least somewhat more balanced than many books from similarly situated authors – so it does have that going for it.
The bibliography clocks in at 15%, which isn’t great, but does meet my bare minimum threshold and there isn’t really much here that would demand a Sagan Standard application – again, this is primarily surface level typical Ivy League Elitist type history.
Indeed, in the areas that Gage travels and covers that I’m most familiar with – specifically, Atlanta – Gage really barely covers anything at all, yet what she does choose to cover is both very surface level yet also, again, reasonably balanced given her current position. She covers Stone Mountain, including both how difficult it is to find in modern Atlanta and how while it remains a hotbed for KKK rallies, these are also seen as a free speech issue where the kooks have to be allowed to speak… but are also largely ignored. She covers MLK and his roots in Atlanta… while missing an interesting deeper dive connection to women’s suffrage and indeed the fight for racial equality that was *right there* at the time and location she was discussing. (Look to when and where Rebecca Latimer Felton, first female US Senator and last formerly slave owning one, died… 😉 )
Overall this is as much travelogue as history, and while it is reasonable as both it also isn’t a particularly deep dive or novel tale in either. Pessimistic and clearly slanted in the expected political direction given her day job and employer, it isn’t *so* heavy handed as to be unreadable… yet those with differing political views also won’t find much use here, as most of the history covered here is fairly standard and well known. Yes, some tidbits here and there are a bit deeper, but really not enough to perhaps justify the read for those with particularly strong political viewpoints that diverge from Gage’s own.
Recommended.
This review of This Land Is Your Land by Beverly Gage was originally written on April 28, 2026.