ABOUT THE BOOK

The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"John Q. Public. Plain Jane. The Average Joe. We know the type but we've never met the person, until Kevin O'Keefe look matters into his own hands. O'Keefe hit the road, pored over surveys and studies, and asked questions of all the "just-folks" that he met, in an effort to find the one man or woman who is more average than any other. And he asked, what does America - a nation as fond of its superlatives, its winners, and its "best of" lists as it is of the common man - think about the averageness within it?"
He traveled from New Hampshire to Hawaii to talk business with the proprietors of Average Joe and Average Jane Athletics Company, spent election day with the first candidate for the Average America party, and was wowed by the magician Myklar the Ordinary. He looked closely at what is often overlooked: the especially ordinary, the remarkably everyday, the extraordinarily average.
Combining this search with a look into the history and assumptions about the average American, O'Keefe discovered that many myths about Americans are untrue. We are not as culturally divided as is often said, nor as fat. Most people are staying in suburbs rather than moving to exurbs, IQs are rising, and no, not everyone wants to be famous. As he had hoped, he learned a lot about this country, the people in it, and whether it's okay to be average.