And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth - The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon - could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future. The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened Hardcover by Bill McKibben (Author) 103 ratings Kindle Edition £10.44 Read with Our Free App Audiobook £0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover £23.66 5 New from £23. In this revelatory cri de coeur, McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened (Paperback) Sandman. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth.īut fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril.Īnd he is curious: What the hell happened?

As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing - knowing - that the United States was the greatest country on earth. In this episode, he discusses three major issues that led him to such a view: racial justice, environmental justice, and the relation between America and Christianity.

The flag the cross and the station wagon