Driven by both national and personal anxiety about the current divisions in the US, photographer Richard Sharum embarked on a journey through the central 'spine' of America. He was in search of the unifying elements of contemporary American national character. Focusing on a 100-mile-wide corridor down the geographic centre of the US encompassing parts of the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas—an area often dismissed as 'flyover country'—Sharum spoke to more than four thousand people and took over fourteen thousand photographs. His aim was to see if this region could hold the key to a better understanding of who America still is as a country and what remains of the collective hope of a unified nation. 'This term, flyover country, was one I'd heard my entire life but had never really thought about when it came to the condescension it implied.' Spina Americana is the first in a series of books titled Of Thee I Sing, focused on contemporary America. The black and white photographs document farmers, ranchers, ice fishermen, churchgoers, hunters and town residents along a corridor stretching from the Mexican border to the Canadian one.