Further Reading

I've been reading Living and Working in America and Living in the USA. Both books had some useful pointers and information in them, but there was a fair amount of chaff in both of them to sort through.
Living and working in America, I found the less useful - it's written by a non-American, which I thought would make it better - the author would have a better idea of what's weird about Americans. Despite the title, a lot of it was about holidaying in America; it suggested that everyone gets two weeks holiday a year, and you might be able to get three if you save it up. But hey! We're not Americans! (Or we wouldn't be reading the book.) Hence, we get sensible amounts of holiday. Despite being revised pretty recently, it suggested that we go to the World Trade Centre to buy theatre tickets, and reminded the reader to cancel the coal deliveries before they left. It also assumed rather more knowledge about US geography than I had, it said things like "From the Midwest to Baltimore, it gets very cold in winter". Now, I can look up Baltimore on a map, but I can't type "Midwest" into Google maps and find out where it is (although it just dawned on me I could use Wikipedia).
Living in the USA I found more useful. It was written by an American, but an American with a fairly enlightened view of what people who aren't Americans think of America. It sometimes seemed to be unsure who it was written for - (almost) saying that "Americans live in houses. In cities. They drive cars." But other times using words I didn't know (flatware, for example, I've just had to look up.)

Both books had trouble with the internet and email - these have affected so many things so fundamentally that it's hard to slot them into the book, but this is what the authors (understandably) have tried to do. LIWIA suggested that you use email to contact people "send an email, and you'll often have a reply the next morning" - No!. Neither book mentioned things like craigslist as a source of ads, although LITU mentioned ebay.


Finally, both books had mistakes, which a moderately decent proofreader should have spotted. LITU suggested that there were three square feet to the square metre. (It's closer to 10. Some people are going to be shocked by the size of their new apartments.)