It's Complicated

Salena Zito, a journalist and author, sets out to understand the country not through newsrooms or the halls of Washington but through the people she meets on the highways linking Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Her subjects are often overlooked and misread, including the Americans who backed Donald Trump and a group of voters whose choices caught many observers off guard and still shape the political scene.

The book gathers Zito's syndicated columns from 2019. Across them she follows the political and cultural events of that year, paying close attention to struggling small businesses, local people who step up for their neighbors, the widening cultural gap between Americans, and the communities that manage to pull together. The collection ends with a look ahead to 2020.