Name: Peter Santenello: Your Fellow Americans
Start: 2026-08-05T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-08-05T20:30:00-05:00
Location: Anderson's Bookshop Naperville

If you have spent any time on YouTube in the last few years, you have probably landed on one of Peter Santenello’s videos and stayed far longer than you meant to. The independent journalist and filmmaker has built an audience of more than four million subscribers by doing the thing the algorithm supposedly punishes: showing up somewhere unfamiliar, staying a while, and letting people talk without cutting them off.

On Wednesday, August 5 at 7:00 p.m., he brings that work to downtown Naperville. Anderson’s Bookshop hosts Santenello at its Naperville store, 123 W Jefferson Ave, to talk about his book Your Fellow Americans. Admission is $35, and that price includes a copy of the book, which makes the math friendlier than it first looks. This one happens inside the store rather than at an offsite venue, so the seat count is genuinely limited and pre-registration is required.

Who Peter Santenello Is

Santenello is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker who has traveled to eighty five countries, but the work he is best known for is closer to home. His long form dispatches take him into American communities that rarely get more than a news cycle of attention: Appalachian towns, Native American reservations, immigrant neighborhoods, border regions, and a lot of places national coverage simply flies over.

What makes the videos work is the pacing. He does not parachute in for a hot take. He rides along, sits down for meals, asks plain questions and lets the answers run long. The result reads more like a travelogue than a news segment, and it has earned him an unusually broad audience across a lot of political lines.

About Your Fellow Americans

Your Fellow Americans grew out of the same approach. The book is assembled from road trips and chance encounters and dinners shared in locals’ homes, and the publisher describes it as capturing what makes this country so dynamic, so resilient, and most of all, so very human.

If you already watch the channel, the appeal is obvious. The page gives him room for the parts that never survive a video edit. If you have never seen a single episode, it still works as a standalone read, and hearing the author talk through it in a small room is a better introduction than any trailer.

What the $35 Ticket Covers

Admission is $35 and includes a copy of Your Fellow Americans, so you are effectively paying for the book plus the evening. Anderson’s issues a PDF ticket carrying an order line number, and that number is what determines your place in the signing line. Keep it handy on your phone rather than hunting for the email at the door.

When: Wednesday, August 5, 2026, 7:00 p.m. to roughly 8:30 p.m.
Where: Anderson’s Bookshop Naperville, 123 W Jefferson Ave, Naperville, IL 60540
Admission: $35, which includes a copy of the book
Registration: required in advance, because space inside the store is limited
Signing: your ticket carries an order line number for the signing queue

A Word About Anderson's Bookshop

Anderson’s has been selling books in Naperville since 1875, when the family’s great great grandfather opened the W. W. Wickel Pharmacy in what was then a farming town and sold books, gifts and toys alongside the prescriptions. The first proper bookstore arrived in 1964, upstairs from the drugstore, under the name Paperback Paradise. It is still independent and family owned, with sister stores in Downers Grove and La Grange.

The shop runs hundreds of author events a year, and how it places them tells you something useful. The biggest draws get moved to outside venues around town, including North Central College. Events that fit a more manageable crowd stay in the store. Santenello’s is staying in the store, which is exactly why registering early matters here.

Plan Your Visit

Anderson’s sits in the middle of downtown Naperville on Jefferson Ave, which is both the best and the trickiest part of going. Best, because you can build a whole evening around it. Trickiest, because parking downtown on a summer Wednesday is competitive well before 7:00 p.m.

Use the parking decks. Downtown Naperville’s public parking decks are a short walk from Jefferson Ave and beat circling the block for a street space.
Come early. In store events fill from the front. If you want a clear sightline, aim to be there comfortably ahead of the 7:00 p.m. start.
Eat first. Jefferson Ave and the blocks around it are dense with restaurants, and an unhurried early dinner beats a rushed one.
Walk the Riverwalk. It is a couple of minutes from the store, and an August evening along the DuPage River is a pleasant way to spend the twenty minutes before doors.
Bring your ticket. The order line number on it is what gets you a place in the signing line.

Author nights are close to a civic habit in Naperville, and this is a good one to break your streak of meaning to go and never going. You get a filmmaker whose entire method is slowing down and listening, in a room small enough that the conversation actually feels like one, with the book in your hands at the end of it. Register in advance through andersonsbookshop.com, because when the room is the store, the room fills.