This unconventional book by Ludovic Balland is a road trip in photographs and interviews. It sets the spotlight on the readers, collecting personal snapshots of daily consumption of the news. A portrait of a yet unread America.

American Readers at Home is a document of the months before and after the American presidential election of 2016, a vast book project in an innovative editorial format. Interview journalism and documentary photography together capture the diversity and the desire for change in American society—though without coming down on either side of the political divide. The 55 interviews and 400 pictures contained in this book focus on American readers and their milieus. They look at media consumption habits and the perception of the media, providing stark insights into its increasingly tyrannical role in society.

In the making of American Readers at Home a small team traveled 13,000 miles across the United States in search of people and places, asking the same question every time: How do American citizens consume the news? In each case, sections on stories, occupations, the election, and the future suggest comparisons between the news as conveyed by the media and the news as perceived by its readers. What information survives mediation? What does it become associated with? What implications does it have for the individual concerned? The answers to these questions constitute an unconventional portrait of contemporary America.

One year on from the last presidential election, American Readers at Home charts an extraordinary journey across the United States at a unique moment in its recent social and political history.