Sweet Liberty: Travels in Irish America, by Joseph O'Connor (Picador, £5.99 in UK)

It must have seemed like a good idea: send a young, enthusiastic Irish writer on a voyage around all the Dublins in America (there are nine) so that he may trace their Irish roots with charm, wit and a certain amount of historical flourish. Alas, most of the American Dublins proved to be extremely dull places whose Irish roots if they ever had any - had long since withered, and it is a tribute to Joe O'Connor's ability as a comic writer that he managed to come up with a book at all, let alone a book that moves as competently as this one from one acidly observed scenario to another. It has very little to do with Irish immigrants, but a lot to do with the rootlessness of contemporary America, where prejudices rage, kindness makes the occasional unexpected appearance and one tourist a month falls into the Grand Canyon.