Opinions

In this wry, incisive collection of essays, Claude C. Washburn turns his gimlet eye on the peculiar predicament of Americans who flee abroad seeking freedom, only to discover that the hardest thing to escape is themselves. Written in 1926, when thousands of disenchanted Americans had decamped to Paris and beyond, these pieces dissect the paradoxes of expatriate life: how leaving America can make you see it more clearly, why opinions feel heavier when you're far from the crowd that shares them, and what it means to build a life on the refusal to simply go along. Washburn is funny about the burden of having convictions in a world that resents them, and honest about the loneliness that comes with thinking for yourself. These are essays written by someone who chose exile not out of contempt for his homeland, but out of a desperate need to understand it. For anyone who has ever felt like a stranger in their own country, or wondered whether freedom is just another word for being untethered.