Mark Singer has a dream job: he travels the country in search of under-the-radar stories, unusual but emblematic tales of American lives, and writes about them in the New Yorker column "U.S. Journal." The results, now for the first time collected in one volume, are vivid, humorous portraits of life in the big cities and small towns of contemporary America. Singer meets the teenage reporters of a Texas town's only newspaper, explores the life of a western Massachusetts diner and the community that needs it, attends a meeting of obituary writers, and offers a pit-side view of the battle over cockfighting. From righteous, middle-aged nudists in Vermont to righteous, middle-aged Civil War reenactors in Louisiana, Singer brings a poignant and humane spirit to his snapshots of people and their trials. Each piece, illuminating in its attention to the telling detail, is delicious on its own terms. But in constellation with one another, these essays reveal a broad portrait of America at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Somewhere in America offers a rare glimpse of the cultural kaleidoscope of our country and reveals a broad portrait of who we are--as individuals, as communities, as Americans.