Another Great Day at Sea : Life Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush

As a child Geoff Dyer spent long hours making and blotchily painting model fighter planes. So as an adult, naturally he jumped at the chance to spend a week onboard the aircraft carrier the USS George H.W. Bush. Part deft travelogue, part unerring social observation, and part finely honed comedy, Another Great Day at Sea is the inimitable Dyer’s account of his time spent wandering the ship’s maze of walkways, hatches, and stairs, and talking with the crew—from the Captain to the ship’s dentists. A lanky Englishman in a deeply American world, Dyer brilliantly records daily life aboard this floating fortress, revealing it to be a prism for understanding a society where discipline and conformity become forms of self-expression. At the same time we are reminded why Dyer is celebrated as one of the most original voices in contemporary literature.

Geoff Dyer’s books include But Beautiful (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award); The Missing of the Somme; Out of Sheer Rage; The Ongoing Moment (winner of the ICP Infinity Award for writing on photography); Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; and Zona. His many awards include the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and, most recently, a National Book Critics Circle Award for the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and his books have been translated into twenty-four languages. Dyer currently lives in Venice, California.