Long Time Leaving Dispatches from Up South

In this irreverent, eminently quotable book, Roy Blount Jr. focuses on his own dueling loyalties across the great American divide. Scholarly, biting, raunchy, and affable, Blount's musings may not end our Civil War, but they do clarify and aptly complicate divisive delusions on both sides of the longstanding national rift. A comic ode to American variety, Long Time Leaving is an assault on Northern and Southern complacency from one of the most celebrated essayists of our time. Book jacket.

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of nineteen other books. He is a panelist on NPR’s "Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!" a columnist for Oxford American, a contributing editor to The Atlantic, and president of the Authors Guild. He lives in western Massachusetts.