Alyssa Karas (BSJ11), Dan Tham (BSJ13)

Seventy-year-old Northwestern journalism professor Loren Ghiglione and two twenty-something Northwestern journalism students, Alyssa Karas and Dan Tham, climbed into a minivan and embarked on a three-month, twenty-eight state, 14,063-mile road trip in search of America’s identity. After interviewing 150 Americans about contemporary identity issues, they compiled this collection, which is part oral history, part shoe-leather reporting, part search for America’s future, part memoir, and part travel journal.