The morning after the 2016 presidential election, singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane packed a suitcase and set out, with no cell phone or internet connection, on a 9,000-mile railway journey around the US, in an attempt to better understand his country.

Over the course of two weeks spent talking to strangers in Amtrak dining cars, he encountered an array of fellow citizens — cowboys, postmasters, religious luddites, national park conservationists, drifters, and seasteading software engineers — who, taken together, amount to nothing less than an American mosaic. At a distance from his daily routine, Kahane meditated on the intimacy and immediacy of train culture, and the ways in which it offers a stark contrast to — and relief from — the fragmentation, polarization, and obsession with efficiency that have come to embody contemporary American society. The highly anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed stage piece, The Ambassador, Gabriel Kahane’s Book of Travelers offers an expansive exploration of American history, regionalism, and the history of travel itself, all couched in a collection of songs as personal as any Kahane has written.