Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, New Yorker illustrator Maira Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., and began a year-long series investigating American democracy and its workings. The result is her idiosyncratic vision of history and contemporary politics, originally published as a twelve part blog in the New York Times and here collected in a single volume.

"It's hard not to be heartened by Kalman's tenacious pursuit of happiness, conveyed in irregularly capitalized handwritten text interspersed with photographs, sketches and cheerful, color-saturated gouache paintings that evoke Matisse.... A refreshing, unorthodox, upbeat—and most welcome—tribute to America."—NPR.org