Canadian-American journalist and essayist David Rakoff’s new collection, is a delicious, wry observation of the American condition. Comparisons with his friend and fellow writer David Sedaris are inevitable, but Rakoff has a darker, less redemptive voice and the opening story about gaining his American citizenship illustrates this perfectly.

His strangely anti-climactic observations as a passenger on one of the last flights of Concorde from New York to London is a standout for me, showing how something with all the hallmarks of a significant event, can actually end up being oddly ordinary (except, maybe, for getting to your destination an hour before you leave!). Anyone who is facinated by the confusion, the contradiction, the humorous, the all-too-human reality show that is America today, will enjoy this collection and be grateful that we are here, and they are there.