Like many Americans these days I spend a fair amount of time wondering how we’ve become so polarized. It’s not just because we’re in an election season. It’s hard to read a newspaper, watch television or even carry on a conversation without noticing the rifts, which seem to grow deeper by the day.

Now that I’m reading American Nations by Colin Woodard, I have a better idea why this is happening. Although written before the most recent shenanigans (it was published in 2011), the book provides a history of, to use Woodard’s subtitle, “the eleven rival regional cultures of North America.” 

I’m learning about the Tidewater, where I live now, and Appalachia, where I grew up — although Woodward admits that the Bluegrass region of Kentucky (my original stomping grounds) might be considered a Tidewater enclave within Greater Appalachia.  And I’m gaining a better understanding of how the tolerant, anything-goes attitude I love about New York City harkens back to the founding of New Amsterdam and its mercantile roots.

We’re less of a melting pot than a large, lumpy stew. And Woodard is helping me understand why.