State by State

Matt Weiland is the Deputy Editor of The Paris Review. He has been an editor at Granta, The Baffler and The New Press, and he oversaw a documentary radio unit at NPR. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Observer, The Nation and The New Republic. He is the co-editor, with Sean Wilsey, of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup and, with Thomas Frank, of Commodify Your Dissent: The Business of Culture in the New Gilded Age. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. Sean Wilsey is the author of Oh the Glory of It All, a memoir, and the creator, with Tamara Shopsin, of a related Web site, ohtheglory.com. He is also an Editor-at-Large for McSweeney's, and the co-editor, with Matt Weiland, of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup.

"[State by State] is a funny, moving, rousing collection, greater than the sum of its excellent parts, a convention of literary superdelegates, each one boisterously nominating his or her piece of the Republic." -- New York Times Book Review "This fascinating collection, inspired by guides in the 1930s and 1940s, includes original essays on each of the states by some of the country's finest (mostly younger) writers." -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Self-consciously modeled after state guides sponsored by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s, this ambitious effort features a terrific roster of writers." -- Kirkus Reviews "Fascinating." -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Odds are, reading STATE BY STATE, that you'll fall for every state a little, even if they remain tremendously hard to explain." -- Los Angeles Times "This eclectic collection of essays describing the ordinary people and places within our 50 states is as essential as the Rand McNally atlas. Alternately brash and bashful...each literary foray in State by State is well worth the trip. Grade: A." -- Entertainment Weekly "An enjoyable journey: 50 essays, cartoons and mini-plays, plus an afterward about Washington, DC and a fascinating appendix...all in all, it makes one yearn for a driver's license and a stretch of open highway." -- New York Post "Ideal nightstand reading and a welcome reminder of the pluribus behind the unum." -- Salon.com