My America | Mart Smeets

Smeets in the States: the long-awaited America book!

On the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot, November 22, 1963, a lifelong fascination for America started for 16-year-old Mart Smeets. His work as a sports journalist often brought him to the country the 54 years after. Many of his experiences in the field of music, sports, politics, art, history, food, travel, hotels and eternal racism ended up in my America.
Smeets takes the reader to the Memphis of Elvis Presley, the Texas of the Oud-Nederlands teamkeeper Jan van Beveren, the Murftresboro where his son Tjerk baseball, his favorite museum and restaurant, his favorite stadium reminders, his most beautiful stadium reminders . He visits old acquaintances and describes the career of the Football coach Mike Ditka, the meaty American Dream, who has been immigrated from Poland. He is lyrical about the US80 from Salt Lake City to Park City, where he also met very briefly Robert Redford (and how). He teaches us about Martin van Buren, the eighth president of the USA (who spoke Dutch at home in Kinderhook), and about the Mormons, the Yankees, the Cola War and 'Southern Comfort'.
In all special, vibrant and moreover informative stories, Mart Smeets also squirts his unsalted opinion about America and the Americans, the country with which he developed a slight hate-love relationship and that never stopped him surprising.

Mart Smeets (1947) worked for Studio Sport from 1974 to 2016. Now he works for EenVandaag Radio and for Ziggo Sport and he writes, in addition to books, various columns.