A Ride Across America: A 4,000-Mile Adventure Through the Small Towns and Big Issues of the USA

’Parker magnificently chronicles the America he encounters, a divided, disfranchised collection of states he fears for but comes to love for their generosity, community spirit and sense of hope’ Ben East, Observer

Frustrated by the shallow headlines focusing only on Trump, guns and divisions, award-winning travel writer Simon Parker decided that to better understand the USA he would have to travel across it, slowly.

Did the America of his teenage dreams really exist? And was it really as fractured as the headlines suggest? On his journey to find out, Simon cycled 4,373 miles through eleven states and numerous extreme weather events, via mountains and prairie lands, forests and freeways. Along the way he visited homes, schools, churches and rodeos, meeting hundreds of (extra)ordinary Americans behind the clickbait news posts to discover a nation whose portrayal has become vastly oversimplified.

Simon Parker is a British travel writer, author, filmmaker, public speaker and broadcast journalist, working across a wide range of themes and subjects. He has reported on stories as diverse as ’migrant crisis’ in Greece and social inequality in the barrios of Northern Colombia. He’s paraglided solo through the Andes and driven a rickshaw the length of India. His first book, Riding Out, was published in 2022. All his travels and adventures are shared with his followers on social media: @simonwiparker or learn more from www.simonwparker.co.uk