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Title: Blue Highways
ISBN: 0671760599
Author:
William Heat-Moon
Publicate Date: 1991-11-01
Publish: 1991-11-01
List Price: $16.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Audio Cassette
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $91.18
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.22
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A 'Must Read', Over and Over Again
I bought this book over 25 years ago. I picked it up by random because the the book's cover synopsis was intriguing. This book has been one of those books that I come back to over and over again. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who seeks a soul-searching adventure. You will feel like you are travelling right along with the author; experiencing his adventures and depth of self-discovery,,, first-hand.
Buy this book and it will be a treasured book that you too, will come back to again, over and over throughout the years.
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2: a road trip classic
If you stop to think about it, this book and those like it really aren't about anything - just a person driving around the country because his relationship wasn't going well and he didn't have anything else to do. But for those of us who love to travel, doing it in person or vicariously through the words of a good travel writer is equally enjoyable, and Moon's anecdotes and experiences - the take he has on humanity - is ample reward for accompanying him on his wanderings.
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3: Good Book
This is an excellent journal of a troubled man's attempt to try to figure out who he is by taking a solitary journey to meet real people and see real places in this country. For all the loners and independent thinkers out there this is our "magic bus".
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4: Does not measure up to other "road" books
I've read a lot of travel and "road" books over the last two years, after having completed my own "cross country" road trip one summer... So not only do I have personal experience out there on this kind of trip, but I've read pretty extensively on the subject (fiction and non-fiction). And, this book came highly recommended (???) on here and I had heard about it several places, so I REALLY wanted to like it! But unfortunately, this book does NOT measure up to all the other "road" books and travelogues. I found myself skipping/skimming VERY quickly through many, many sections (especially many of the conversations and his own brooding). I found several interesting stories, road/place descriptions, and insights - but I only made it about 1/2 through this book until I just couldn't keep going anymore. I am a person who truly appreciates the road and good writing about the road, but this is not it. I couldn't put my finger on it, but some of the stories were just plain boring and some too long-winded... and except for a few notable conversations/people, I was not interested in the people he met... This "journey into America" does not measure up to other books in this category. I have no idea if the last half of the book is better than the first, maybe it is but I doubt it after reading some other reviews. I give it two stars for some interesting insights and descriptions but don't waste your time. Find some better road books.
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5: Sweet Land Of Liberty
"When the mystical young Black Elk went to the summit of Harney Peak to see the shape of things, he looked down on the great unifying hoop of peoples," William Least Heat-Moon writes during the Southern leg of his road trip around the United States described in "Blue Highways". "I looked down and saw fragments."
Readers of "Blue Highways" see fragments, too. Fragments of land; Heat-Moon recounting details from his trek across the United States and back again, first from down south, then from up north. Fragments of prose, small chapters being the rule. Fragments of style, him alternating between Walt Whitman and Walter Cronkite in singing the land and then reporting on it. And fragments of people, those he meets and those he finds inside himself, the latter being an array of white and Indian ancestors who collectively make him something of the loyal outsider, expecting the worst in others yet quick to seek and report on their inner light.
"Blue Highways" casts a sometimes sad eye on the American experience, circa 1977, when Heat-Moon made his circuit. Some reviewers here call it dour, and it is in parts, but what struck me about the book again and again was the tensile strength of people Heat-Moon came across throughout the country.
"American history is parking lots," he is told. By staying off the main roads and traveling the byways, Heat-Moon tries to disprove this, and succeeds by discovering and documenting how our history lives on, in old people with surprisingly young ideas, poor people who are unreservedly generous, and a half-deranged hitchhiking evangelist who clues Heat-Moon on a vision of greater happiness through service to others.
It's only natural there was a gap of five years between the time Heat-Moon made his trip and the book's 1982 publication. The depth of detail offered here, of the ecospheres of everything from a Louisiana bayou to a New Mexican desert, and the rich, individualized histories of so many towns, suggest less a human narrator than a vacuum cleaner of knowledge unless one allows for the fact Heat-Moon buttressed up his initial notes with long supplemental research. But, oh, the majesty of the end result.
I really liked the glimpses Heat-Moon gives of himself, unhappily trying to shake off the end of an unstable marriage by pushing himself away from home, coming to doubt time and again the wisdom of his rash action. But, after much soul-searching and a few blind alleys, he comes to find solace in the people he meets.
"Some people sit around and wait for the world to poke them," notes an old Maryland woman. "Well, you have to keep the challenges coming on. Make them up if necessary."
The reader finds something, too, a realization America still can renew the human spirit, by reminding us, in the beauty of her land, the freedom of her ways, and the endurance of her people, that life while not easy offers great things in the littlest moments.
The denseness of Heat-Moon's prose almost demands repeat readings, but the richness and variety of his style amply rewards them. "Blue Highways" is an American journey worth taking again and again.
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