Reborn in the USA: An Englishman's Love Letter to His Chosen Home

by Roger Bennett

Overview

The #1 New York Times Bestseller

One-half of the celebrated Men in Blazers duo, longtime culture and soccer commentator Roger Bennett traces the origins of his love affair with America, and how he went from a depraved, pimply faced Jewish boy in 1980’s Liverpool to become the quintessential Englishman in New York. A memoir for fans of Jon Ronson and Chuck Klosterman, but with Roger Bennett’s signature pop culture flair and humor.

Being a teenager isn’t easy, no matter where in the world you live or how much it does or doesn’t rain in your hometown. As an outsider—a private-schooled Jewish kid in working-class, heavily Catholic Liverpool—Roger Bennett wasn’t winning any popu­larity contests. But there was one idea, or ideal, that burned bright in Roger’s heart. That was America— with its sunny skies, beautiful women, and cool kids with flipped collars who ate at McDonald’s. When he embraced American popular culture, the dull gray world he lived in turned to neon teal—a color which had not even been invented in England yet. Intro­duced first through the gateway drug of The Love Boat, then to Rolling Stone, the NFL, John Hughes movies, Run-DMC, and Tracy Chapman, Roger embraced everything that would capture the imagination of a teenager growing up Stateside. When he made a real, in-the-flesh American friend who invited him over for the summer, he got to visit the promised land. A month in Chicago, and a life-changing night spent in the company of the Chicago Bears, was the first hit of freedom, of independence, of the Roger Bennett he knew he could be.

(Re)Born in the USA captures the universality of growing pains, growing up, and growing out of where you come from. Drenched in the culture of the late ’80s and ’90s from the UK and the USA, and the heartfelt, hilarious sense of humor that has made Roger Bennett so beloved by his listeners, here is both a truly unique coming-of-age story and the love letter to America that the country needs right now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062958716
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/28/2022
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	308,599
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Roger Bennett is a broadcaster and podcaster and half of the duo Men in Blazers. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Men in Blazers Present Encyclopedia Blazertannica.

Table of Contents

Timeline viii

Prologue: Of Hot Wings and Fast Cars 1

Introduction: A Room Full of Strangers 5

Book 1 The Darkness/English Rog

Chapter 1 Amber Waves of … Rain 13

Chapter 2 Spaghetti Scarlet Letter 23

Chapter 3 Bullshit Baffles Brains 31

Chapter 4 Feathered Hair Fantasies 41

Chapter 5 "Just Locker Room Talk" 49

Chapter 6 Think Once, Think Twice … Duck 61

Chapter 7 The Other American Revolution 67

Chapter 8 Bar Mitzvah Disco 73

Chapter 9 The Pepsi Choice 87

Book 2 The Half-Light/Transatlantic Rog

Chapter 10 The King Takes America 101

Chapter 11 Fat Knacker's Words of Wisdom 107

Chapter 12 The Funky Chicken 113

Chapter 13 Like a Roiling Stone 123

Chapter 14 Crockett's Theme 135

Chapter 15 My American Twin 147

Chapter 16 Super Bowl Shuffle 159

Chapter 17 The Goers Go 163

Book 3 The Light/American Rog

Chapter 18 Beef, Democracy, and Freedom 175

Chapter 19 Game Show Winner 179

Chapter 20 On Glencoe Beach 185

Chapter 21 Don't You … Forget About Me 191

Chapter 22 Midnight with the Fridge 195

Chapter 23 The End Is the Beginning 203

Chapter 24 New Rog in Town 209

Chapter 25 The Transformation of Titty Thomson 217

Chapter 26 Leveling Up 223

Chapter 27 Bigmouth Strikes 231

Chapter 28 Liverpool College Breaking Crew 243

Chapter 29 The Big Show 257

Chapter 30 The Wake-up Bell 269

Chapter 31 The Beastie Boys and the Liverpool Welcome 279

Chapter 32 We've Got to Make a Decision 291

Epilogue 301

Afterword 312

Acknowledgments 317

About the Author 323

Editorial Reviews

"Fast, funny and often endearing. . . a candid and funny account of growing up in the wrong country and making it right.

Wall Street Journal

What's most compelling about this book is the way it shifts the view of how we're supposed to think about the United States. It's a British projection of late 20th century America that's now rejected by most Americans and assumed to be false. Yet what people in American have been conditioned to view as an illusion was wholly genuine to Roger Bennett, and this memoir is a remarkable reminder that perception is not merely a form of historical reality. Perception is all that we have.

Chuck Klosterman

How many worlds can one bloke conquer? When that bloke is a warm hearted, funny, smart and hilarious storyteller named Roger Bennett, the answer seems to be: as many as he wants. This book, part memoir part love letter to his adopted home country of the United States, Reborn in the USA captivated me from first page to last.

Brian Koppelman

Reborn in the USA is about a kid who grows up in the North of England, yearning to be an American in all its terrible glory. But it’s really about so much more. Hilariously written from Roger Bennett’s wry and thoughtful perspective, this book is a universal story of growing up and trying to figure out who you are in the world. A time capsule but also a timeless coming of age tale.

Nick Kroll

"What makes Reborn in the USA so special is the storytelling: Bennett's hilarious, keenly observed, and deeply moving memoir reminds us that dreams can come true—if not always quite in the way we dreamt them. A wonderful book about coming-of-age in the 1980s, dreaming of a different life, and falling in love with an idea of a place—and then with the place itself."

John Green

Bennett might be the only writer alive who can weave childhood obsessions with both the Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears and Tracy Chapman into a singular coming of age story. Reborn in the USA is a poignant, rollicking read, reminding us not only of what it means to pursue the American dream, but what that dream should—and still can—represent.

Mina Kimes

It may not have been your teenage fever dream to leave your dull, rainy hometown in England to move to the land of neon, MTV, and the NFL. But it was Roger Bennett’s, and lucky for us, we get to read about it in hilarious, excruciating, and ultimately uplifting detail in (Re)Born in the USA. A book that celebrates growing up, popular culture, and, the universality of needing to become the person you’re meant to be.” 

Nora McInerny

Roger Bennett – a co-host of the “Men in Blazers” show – wrote a memoir filled with silliness, sports, and pop culture. It’s good for a laugh, but it’s also a thoughtful memoir about his love for the US and how to be a beacon of joy in a divided country.

Business Insider

"Fast, funny and often endearing. . . a candid and funny account of growing up in the wrong country and making it right.

Wall Street Journal

"Fast, funny and often endearing. . . a candid and funny account of growing up in the wrong country and making it right.” — Wall Street Journal

Roger Bennett – a co-host of the “Men in Blazers” show – wrote a memoir filled with silliness, sports, and pop culture. It’s good for a laugh, but it’s also a thoughtful memoir about his love for the US and how to be a beacon of joy in a divided country. — Business Insider

"What makes Reborn in the USA so special is the storytelling: Bennett's hilarious, keenly observed, and deeply moving memoir reminds us that dreams can come true—if not always quite in the way we dreamt them. A wonderful book about coming-of-age in the 1980s, dreaming of a different life, and falling in love with an idea of a place—and then with the place itself." — John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down 

What's most compelling about this book is the way it shifts the view of how we're supposed to think about the United States. It's a British projection of late 20th century America that's now rejected by most Americans and assumed to be false. Yet what people in American have been conditioned to view as an illusion was wholly genuine to Roger Bennett, and this memoir is a remarkable reminder that perception is not merely a form of historical reality. Perception is all that we have. — Chuck Klosterman, bestselling author of But What If We're Wrong? and Chuck Klosterman X

Reborn in the USA is about a kid who grows up in the North of England, yearning to be an American in all its terrible glory. But it’s really about so much more. Hilariously written from Roger Bennett’s wry and thoughtful perspective, this book is a universal story of growing up and trying to figure out who you are in the world. A time capsule but also a timeless coming of age tale. — Nick Kroll, co-creator of Big Mouth, Netflix 

Bennett might be the only writer alive who can weave childhood obsessions with both the Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears and Tracy Chapman into a singular coming of age story. Reborn in the USA is a poignant, rollicking read, reminding us not only of what it means to pursue the American dream, but what that dream should—and still can—represent. — Mina Kimes, NFL Analyst and Senior Writer, ESPN

“How many worlds can one bloke conquer? When that bloke is a warm hearted, funny, smart and hilarious storyteller named Roger Bennett, the answer seems to be: as many as he wants. This book, part memoir part love letter to his adopted home country of the United States, Reborn in the USA captivated me from first page to last.” — Brian Koppelman, co-creator and showrunner, Billions

“It may not have been your teenage fever dream to leave your dull, rainy hometown in England to move to the land of neon, MTV, and the NFL. But it was Roger Bennett’s, and lucky for us, we get to read about it in hilarious, excruciating, and ultimately uplifting detail in (Re)Born in the USA. A book that celebrates growing up, popular culture, and, the universality of needing to become the person you’re meant to be.”  — Nora McInerny, bestselling author of It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too) and creator of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast

Entertaining... Bennett is good-natured, self-deprecating, and wryly observant throughout… A three-cheers homage to an America that, Bennett suggests, is returning to its open-arms promise of days past. — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2021-05-04
A fan’s notes on the beckoning city on the hill, the America of old.

"America existed almost as an alternate planet to me, a place filled with possibility and promise, where life seemed to be lived with a different gravitational pull.” So writes Liverpudlian Bennett, the descendant of a Russian Jew who left home to go to America and mistakenly got off in the U.K. instead—all reason enough for the author to have considered himself, from his earliest years, as “an American trapped in an Englishman’s body.” If his parents and schoolmates were sometimes bemused by his attachment to such emblems of American popular culture asSaturday Night Live, he found encouragement in the teacher he fondly calls “Fat Knacker,” who told tales of an America that welcomed newcomers and promised grand adventures. Most of Bennett’s entertaining memoir takes place in the U.K., though at the end, he finally arrives in the U.S., first in Chicago and then in New York. “For me, the United States has proven to be a land so free, you even allow bald blokes with accents to appear on television,” he writes appreciatively, having logged many hours as the co-host of Men in Blazers, a popular soccer-focused sports show. Bennett is good-natured, self-deprecating, and wryly observant throughout, recounting a disastrous bar mitzvah, feckless romances, teenage infatuations, and suchlike things. He takes a serious turn, though, when he writes about when he finally became an American, a time when the nation was presided over by a racist xenophobe. “The fact I had become a citizen at the very time the United States became so turbulent and chaotic was crushing,” he writes, noting that like so many other immigrants, he had come to the country on a tourist visa and simply stayed on, never having had to cultivate the fear of authorities that so many other would-be Americans have to endure.

A three-cheers homage to an America that, Bennett suggests, is returning to its open-arms promise of days past.

Kirkus Reviews