As an answer to those anti-democratic types who screech, “America: Love it or leave it!,” Mark Ehrman (who will have decamped to Berlin by the time you read this) offers this handy — and exhaustively researched — guidebook to the practical perils of expatriation, which 300,000 pursue annually. Getting Out reveals the top 50 expat meccas, with anecdotes by those who moved there and stayed, detailing the reasons they left the U.S. Ehrman covers everything from support groups for fellow emigrants to extradition treaties, banking, concerns of religion, costs of living, and Internet infrastructure for each country. Getting Out is the most challenging of all possible travel guides, because expatriation demands true change for the individual adult human being. While those vacationing in the barren corners of a lonely planet have the option of returning home to hearth and hill, others try to make it in Europe on $45 a day. The expatriate, however, charts his destiny in terms of years. With permanence as his goal, he is confident only in himself and the fact that there’s someplace better for him to live. Essentially, Getting Out is a chronicle of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — but happiness far from a country bearing that phrase as its hallmark.

GETTING OUT: Your Guide to Leaving America | By MARK EHRMAN | Process | 360 pages | $17 softcover

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