The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America; by Bill Bryson.

Bill Bryson is writing about home country and being familiar with it lends another colour to reading it - it is not as humourous as the Small Island, perhaps due to his need to be patriotic. The anecdote that stays in mind about the travels is about finding cornish pasty, a dish that is quitessentially UK, in an unexpected place in US in some small corner and realising it was not that great after all. So the joke again is on Europe, not US.

This is the difference of the spirits of the two nations concerned. Notice for just one example the complete failure of the remake of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister in US featuring the president of US and how they could really not show him as lacking in wisdom and sharpness, although this was a show that came after the Reagan era and they could not have lacked a model - on the contrary. The show turned out to be a dud, with the pontificating patriarch of a president. The same has happened with many other shows, that either could not be copied or lost an edge.