Land of Dreams

"Land of Dreams - A Reporter's Journey from Sweden to America" is a personal and political retrospective on my many years in the United States, from my arrival in Los Angeles in June 1960 to today's Washington, DC, with the country's first African-American president, Barack Obama, in the White House. This personal portrait of America draws from meetings, interviews, books, and much travel, both for work and pleasure, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and back again. It's the result of a boyhood dream about America growing up in Stockholm, Sweden in the 1950s that was impossible to resist and that became reality when I arrived as a young immigrant and student in California. I came to Los Angeles the summer when John F. Kennedy became the presidential nominee at the Democratic Convention in that city. Those years in the first half of the 1960s, dominated by the civil rights movement and the escalation of the Vietnam War, resulted in my political awakening. Little did I know at the time what was to follow during the subsequent decades, but my dream of America has mirrored these years. America is still exciting, full of hope. It constantly surprises and impresses with its openness, optimism, idealism, and energy. But there is also much that is difficult to understand and difficult to accept about America. Many non-Americans think they know America and that it's like Sweden and Europe. America is more difficult to know and understand than many believe. It is so big and there are many Americas. Which America? Today, the country is characterized by political polarization and paralysis and by growing economic inequality. The old belief in consensus and compromise has all but vanished. Where is America heading? Still, the American Dream is ever present, and we who have come here from other nations share that dream.