American Nomad

This is the first non-fiction effort from novelist Erickson. It started as an assignment from Rolling Stone to cover the 1996 presidential election from start to finish but became something else when Erickson was fired by Jann Wenner after the New Hampshire primary. Erickson kept going, turning his on-the-road reportage into a vehicle for addressing--dare we say it?--his fear and loathing on the campaign trail of what the country was becoming. With Thompsonesque doses of hyperbole, rock music, painkillers, and booze, Erickson paints a picture of a nation on the brink of breaking away from its special heritage of law, fairness, and freedom.