Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | 917.304 BRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 917.304 BRO | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
In the drolly comic tradition of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, a celebrated culture critic, British expatriate, and NPR essayist offers a lively and thoughtful account of his long, strange trip hitchhiking across the United States. of color photos.
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
A frequently charming narrative epic in which a one-time hippie hitchhiker throws off middle-aged shackles and takes to the road in search of an America that, this time, he finds everywhere. British expat Brookes (Signs of Life, 1997) arrived in the US in 1973 as a starry-eyed youth and hitchhiked around the beguiling heartland, alongside what seemed to be his whole generation. He repeats his original journey, this time under the auspices of narrative construction, and in loose tandem with National Geographic photographer Tomaszewski hitchhikes (with occasional concessions to practical travel) from Pennsylvania to San Francisco, up to Sturgis, South Dakota (for its famed "biker" convention), and then through the dispiriting Midwestern "Rust Belt" back to his Vermont home. Throughout, Brookes presents the nitty-gritty of interstate-trekking and hitching rides with effective vividness and immediacy. One is reassured, as was Brookes himself, by the friendly generosity of the "natives" he encounters--although they're an eccentric lot, pursuing their separate Ahabian quests--and by the straightened-out lives of the erstwhile "freaks" he contacts from his 1973 journey. Subtle social undertones develop: he hitches many rides from long-haul truckers and veterans, from jittery libertarians and salt-of-the-earth blue-collar types, from kindly middle-aged liberals and hyper-capitalists in fancy cars. Brookes's own political sensibility can become cloying, or predictable: suburbanites fear too much, the rural impoverished among us are the sainted folk, and lest we forget, All The Young People were surely on the right path during the ever-mourned 1960s. Fortunately, his well-honed sense of detail and witty-yet-unsettling prose, which recall a less acid Martin Amis, carry the day. And many of his darker observations--from the shunting aside of Native American communities to the physically destructive supremacy of automobile culture in US life--ring true, even in the context of his naturalistic amble. This enjoyable book functions variously: as an enthusiastic pro-hitchhiking treatise, a reverent guide to an evanescent "ordinary" America, and a sometimes-pedantic address of contemporary division and isolation. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In 1973, Brookes, then a British student, spent three months hitchhiking across America, dazzled by a girl from Iowa he had met at Oxford. In 1998, Brookes, now a writer, teacher, and longtime Vermonter, decides to re-create that experience and hitchhike to the same places again. He's not crazy: he periodically takes trains or buses and carries a cell phone in his daughter's sock. He tracks a few of the people and most of the places he encountered the first time, but this is no self-referential wallowing. He's not interested in reliving the past but in illuminating the present, and he carries both a cheerful lack of anxiety and a disarming lack of pretense. In crisp, short chapters, he recounts conversations with the folks who pick him up and his responses to the places he goes: a gospel church in San Francisco; a previous wife in Seattle; a desolate reservation in South Dakota. He finds kindness and gratitude, and he clearly has those within himself as well. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido
Library Journal Review
The somewhat offputting title refers to the three-month journey Brookes made across America in 1973 at the age of 20. Describing how he traveled from east to west, touching into Canada and then returning home, the author offers a valid perspective on what has changed over 25 years. A professor, essayist on National Public Radio, and author (e.g., Catching My Breath: An Asthmatic Explores His Illness), Brookes is more than qualified to write an account of this sort. However, he lacks the vital art of sharing his emotions and capturing and entertaining the reader so skillfully demonstrated by the likes of Dervla Murphy, Tim Cahill, and Bill Bryson. Since this is a National Geographic title, one expects high-caliber, exciting, and engaging writing. What one gets instead is rather disappointing; there is an underlying sense that this book is the completion of an assignment rather than a work of passion. An optional purchase.ÄJo-Anne Mary Benson, Osgoode, Ont. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| 1 A Barometer of Goodwill | p. 1 |
| 2 Anywho | p. 10 |
| 3 Clothing Technologies | p. 16 |
| 4 The Road to Jericho | p. 20 |
| 5 Searching for That Wonderful Tribe | p. 24 |
| 6 Been a Long Time Since I Did the Stroll | p. 29 |
| 7 The Vagabond, When Rich | p. 48 |
| 8 "Public" Being a Dirty Word | p. 57 |
| 9 In the Silverware Drawer | p. 70 |
| 10 Dysgeography | p. 78 |
| 11 Missile Silos Would Make Great Condos | p. 84 |
| 12 A Frontier Planet | p. 96 |
| 13 "A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow" | p. 104 |
| 14 Red Wind at the Mirage | p. 113 |
| 15 Another Casualty of the Sixties | p. 123 |
| 16 Between Me and the Basted Egg | p. 143 |
| 17 Laundry on the Freeway | p. 147 |
| 18 Don't Start Singing Before the Money Gets Through | p. 152 |
| 19 Fundamentally Nomadic | p. 161 |
| 20 An Overlapping Assortment of Fantasies | p. 174 |
| 21 Trodden by Rogues | p. 179 |
| 22 The Last Don | p. 185 |
| 23 Idiot A, Idiot B, and the Journey Back East | p. 194 |
| 24 Hate Kickin' This Thing out of Cruise Control | p. 201 |
| 25 Jeff Bridges Has a Ranch Up Here | p. 213 |
| 26 Where My Dead Lie Buried | p. 228 |
| 27 The Hitchhiker Remains at Large | p. 236 |
| 28 The Lord Said It Was All Right | p. 242 |
| 29 Falling by the Wayside | p. 249 |
| 30 Between Order and Chaos | p. 254 |
| 31 Bitumen in Their Veins | p. 262 |
| 32 You Aren't Going to Blow Us Up, Are You? | p. 266 |
| 33 Dowsing for Kindness | p. 285 |
| 34 We Should Do All Right | p. 296 |
| Appendix A A Short History of Hitchhiking | p. 301 |
| Appendix B Product Testing Notes | p. 306 |
