State by State

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

Author	Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, eds.
Language	English
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Harper Collins
Publication date	2008
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
ISBN	978-0-06-147090-5

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America is a collection of pieces about the United States, with one essay on each of the fifty states. It was conceived of and edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey.

Background

Weiland and Wilsey stated that they were inspired by the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s, in which the US government helped to create jobs by sending writers across the country and commissioning pieces on their sights and experiences. The two previously edited Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, in which they commissioned 32 authors to write pieces on the 32 countries competing in the 2006 World Cup; they decided a similar approach could be taken with the United States.

Both Weiland and Wilsey decided that they wanted a mixture of approaches for the collection; while several well-known authors (e.g., Ha Jin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Dave Eggers) were included, they deliberately avoided certain authors that were closely associated with a particular state - for instance, Garrison Keillor with Minnesota, or Carl Hiaasen with Florida. The collection has a mix of familiarity, with some authors writing about places in which they have lived their entire lives, while others visited the state for the first time.

Critical Reception

State by State was widely reviewed. The New York Times Book Review promised its readers they’d be “smarter” after reading the anthology, which was “greater than the sum of its excellent parts.” The reviewer did acknowledge, “Of course not all the essays work. A few are outright dull. On the other hand, the problem might be that Will Blythe and Heidi Julavits set the bar too high.” In a podcast, the editor of the Times Book Review proclaimed State by State a book “we’d all do well to consult.” The New York Observer found it “a sign of progress, a ray of hope.” The Village Voice named State by State a best book of the year, as did National Public Radio. Entertainment Weekly gave the anthology an “A”; Time judged it “actually kind of great.” The London Independent concluded, “If the new American administration is serious about its cultural diplomacy and it use of soft power, it might want to let the rest of the world in on what America looks like from the inside....The state department could do a lot worse than issue every embassy with a box or two of State to State.”

Presentation to Barack Obama

As he documented in an essay for the Guardian, Sean Wilsey personally presented a copy of State by State to Barack Obama in late 2008. Wilsey was invited to attend an event after donating his portion of the advance for the book to Obama’s campaign. “When he turned to shake my hand, for some reason I chose to address him by his first name, saying, ‘Barack, I brought you this book.’” Six photographs were taken of the handover. “As I handed it to him I was thinking we, all of us, did this for you. I think you can see that in the [accompanying] picture.” Obama was very interested in the book and began reading it in front of Wilsey.

Distribution to Schools and Related Coverage

Select institutions received complimentary copies of State by State. Many educators received the book with respectful interest and enthusiasm. On the website The Millions, a teacher asked whether he should assign the book in his 21st century literature class. It was one of four tomes he was considering; the others were “[Charles] Bock’s Beautiful Children, [Joshua] Ferris’ Then We Came To The End, and Brock Clarke’s An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England…. “My students are really intelligent, and so just about anything is fair game.” Millions contributor Edan Lepucki responded, “Of the four you’re considering teaching, I think State by State is the best, since it showcases so many great writers. While I enjoyed Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End, I think a workplace narrative would be lost on most teenagers.”

Professor Tyler Cowen, on the site Marginal Revolution: Small Steps to a Much Better World, noted that he was thinking of assigning State by State to his graduate students at Berlin’s Freie Universität along with Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

Manhattan’s progressive Calhoun School used State by State for its Upper School students in 2012 as required summer reading. The school assigned fifteen essays, two of which are graphic essays, or comic strips. “There’s interesting material in every essay and we are certain that this book will spark a wide variety of interesting conversations between students, teachers and parents,” the school noted on its webiste.

Matt Weiland and two of his writers were hosted by a Milwaukee high school for a reading at an assembly. “I wasn’t sure what high school students would make of it, but we were careful to select the pieces with the most drinking and the most sex,” Weiland told Bookslut. Columbia, the alumni magazine of Columbia University, of which Weiland is a graduate, profiled him in an article called “This Land is Weiland" and praised him as “a consummate intellectual.”

Essays