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America Day by Day
by Simone De Beauvoir
There are plenty of books on the "great American road trip"; there are not so many as deliciously told as this, however. In 1947 the French writer spent four months travelling by car, Greyhound and train between New York and LA - and back again - tucking into the states' diverse customs and cultures en route. She encounters Chicago's underworld of morphine addicts, gambles in Reno and smokes her first joint at the Plaza Hotel.