America's First Interstate

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Author :
Publisher : Kent State University
ISBN 13 : 9781606353974
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (539 download)

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Book Synopsis America's First Interstate by : Roger Pickenpaugh

Download or read book America's First Interstate written by Roger Pickenpaugh and published by Kent State University. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of America's first government-sponsored highway The National Road was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, this 620-mile road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was the main avenue to the West. Roger Pickenpaugh's comprehensive account is based on detailed archival research into documents that few scholars have examined, including sources from the National Archives, and details the promotion, construction, and use of this crucially important thoroughfare. America's First Interstate looks at the road from the perspective of westward expansion, stagecoach travel, freight hauling, livestock herding, and politics of construction as the project goes through changing presidential administrations. Pickenpaugh also describes how states assumed control of the road once the US government chose to abandon it, including the charging of tolls. His data-mining approach--revealing technical details, contracting procedures, lawsuits, charges and countercharges, local accounts of travel, and services along the road--provides a wealth of information for scholars to more critically consider the cultural and historical context of the Road's construction and use. While most of America's First Interstate covers the early days during the era of stagecoach and wagon traffic, the story continues to the decline of the road as railroads became prominent, its rebirth as US Route 40 during the automobile age, and its status in the present day.

Divided Highways

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Publisher : Penguin Group
ISBN 13 : 9780140267716
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (677 download)

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Book Synopsis Divided Highways by : Tom Lewis

Download or read book Divided Highways written by Tom Lewis and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Divided Highways, Tom Lewis tells the monumental story of the largest engineered structure ever built: the Interstate Highway System. Here is one of the great untold tales of American enterprise, recounted entirely through the stories of the human beings who thought up, mapped out, poured, paved - and tried to stop - the Interstates. Conceived and spearheaded by Thomas "the Chief" MacDonald, the iron-willed bureaucrat from the muddy farmlands of Iowa who rose to unrivaled power, the highway system was propelled forward through the pathbreaking efforts of brilliant engineers, argued over by politicians of every ideological and moral stripe, reviled by the citizens whose lives it devastated, and lauded as the greatest public works project in U.S. history.

The Roads that Built America

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Author :
Publisher : Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9781402734687
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (346 download)

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Book Synopsis The Roads that Built America by : Dan McNichol

Download or read book The Roads that Built America written by Dan McNichol and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2006 celebrates the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Interstate System, the most incredible road system in the world. Created by Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose WW II experiences taught him the necessity of a superhighway for military transport and evacuation in wartime, today's Interstate System is what connects our coasts and our borders, our cities and small towns. It's made possible our suburban lifestyle and caused the vast proliferation of businesses from HoJos to Holiday Inns. And if you order something online, most likely it's a truck barreling along an interstate that gets the product to your door. Written by bestselling author Dan McNichol, The Roads that Built America is the fascinating story of the largest engineering project the world has ever known.

Killer on the Road

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Publisher : Univ of TX + ORM
ISBN 13 : 029274210X
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Killer on the Road by : Ginger Strand

Download or read book Killer on the Road written by Ginger Strand and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True crime meets cultural history in this story of how America’s interstate highway system opened a world of mobility and opportunity . . . for serial killers. Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them: the highway killer. He went by many names: the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation—and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell. “Strand . . . Explores the connection between America’s sprawling highway system and the pathology of the murderers who have made them a killing ground. . . . The grim stories of murder on the highway may do for road trips what Jaws did for surfing. An interesting detour into a true-crime niche.” ―Kirkus Reviews “Strand’s cross-threaded tales of drifters, stranded motorists, and madmen got its hooks into me. Reading Ms. Strand’s thoughtful book is like driving a Nash Rambler after midnight on a highway to hell.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “A titillating, clever volume that mixes the sweeping sociological assertions of an urban-studies textbook with the chilling gore of true-crime stories.” —Bookforum “Ginger Strand is in possession of a sharp eye, a biting wit, a beguiling sense of fun—and a magnificent obsession.” —Bloomberg

The Big Roads

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Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 054754913X
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (475 download)

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Book Synopsis The Big Roads by : Earl Swift

Download or read book The Big Roads written by Earl Swift and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the twists and turns of one of America’s great infrastructure projects with this “engrossing history of the creation of the U.S. interstate system” (Los Angeles Times). It’s become a part of the landscape that we take for granted, the site of rumbling eighteen-wheelers and roadside rest stops, a familiar route for commuters and vacationing families. But during the twentieth century, the interstate highway system dramatically changed the face of our nation. These interconnected roads—over 47,000 miles of them—are man-made wonders, economic pipelines, agents of sprawl, uniquely American symbols of escape and freedom, and an unrivaled public works accomplishment. Though officially named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, this network of roadways has origins that reach all the way back to the World War I era, and The Big Roads—“the first thorough history of the expressway system” (The Washington Post)—tells the full story of how they came to be. From the speed demon who inspired a primitive web of dirt auto trails to the largely forgotten technocrats who planned the system years before Ike reached the White House to the city dwellers who resisted the concrete juggernaut when it bore down on their neighborhoods, this book reveals both the massive scale of this government engineering project, and the individual lives that have been transformed by it. A fast-paced history filled with fascinating detours, “the book is a road geek’s treasure—and everyone who travels the highways ought to know these stories” (Kirkus Reviews).

The National Road

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801851551
Total Pages : 524 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (515 download)

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Book Synopsis The National Road by : Karl B. Raitz

Download or read book The National Road written by Karl B. Raitz and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From there two routes went west toward the Mississippi River, one to East St. Louis and the other to Alton, Illinois. (Today the Road's path is followed, for the most part, by U.S. 40 and I-70.).

Asphalt and Politics

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Author :
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786454679
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis Asphalt and Politics by : Thomas L. Karnes

Download or read book Asphalt and Politics written by Thomas L. Karnes and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2009-10-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From animal paths to superhighways, transportation has been the backbone of American expansion and growth. This examination of the interstate highway system in the United States, and the forces that shaped it, includes the introduction of the automobile, the Good Roads Movement, and the Lincoln Highway Association. The book offers an analysis of state and federal road funding, modern road-building options, and the successes and failures of the current highway system. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Interstate

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Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN 13 : 1572337834
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (723 download)

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Book Synopsis Interstate by : Mark H. Rose

Download or read book Interstate written by Mark H. Rose and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2012-03-30 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new, expanded edition brings the story of the Interstates into the twenty-first century. It includes an account of the destruction of homes, businesses, and communities as the urban expressways of the highway network destroyed large portions of the nation’s central cities. Mohl and Rose analyze the subsequent urban freeway revolts, when citizen protest groups battled highway builders in San Francisco, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, Washington, DC, and other cities. Their detailed research in the archival records of the Bureau of Public Roads, the Federal Highway Administration, and the U.S. Department of Transportation brings to light significant evidence of federal action to tame the spreading freeway revolts, curb the authority of state highway engineers, and promote the devolution of transportation decision making to the state and regional level. They analyze the passage of congressional legislation in the 1990s, especially the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), that initiated a major shift of Highway Trust Fund dollars to mass transit and light rail, as well as to hiking trails and bike lanes. Mohl and Rose conclude with the surprising popularity of the recent freeway teardown movement, an effort to replace deteriorating, environmentally damaging, and sometimes dangerous elevated expressway segments through the inner cities. Sometimes led by former anti-highway activists of the 1960s and 1970s, teardown movements aim to restore the urban street grid, provide space for new streetcar lines, and promote urban revitalization efforts. This revised edition continues to be marked by accessible writing and solid research by two well-known scholars.

The American Road

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Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700632417
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Road by : Katherine M. Johnson

Download or read book The American Road written by Katherine M. Johnson and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The American Road Katherine M. Johnson develops a bold new theory for how the American highway system has taken on such outsized scale and complexity by emphasizing the emergence of a powerful administrative apparatus in the American federal system. Established in 1914 expressly to intervene in the congressional debates of the era, the American highway bureaucracy consisted of forty-eight state highway officials acting in and through their self-organized association, the American Association of State Highway Officials. Johnson’s central argument is that this new institution occupied a similar position relative to the American state as political parties and courts did. The capacity to organize across a complex constitutional order enabled it to control the purpose and allocation of federal highway aid for the better part of the twentieth century. Johnson investigates this new conception of the American highway bureaucracy, showing specifically where and how that extraconstitutional authority emerged, expanded, and manifested itself in the legislative history, physical dimensions, and geographical reach of the emerging highway system. The American Road reveals that all of the major highway legislation approved by Congress from 1916 to 1941 was collectively developed and advanced by state and federal highway bureaucrats drawing on the new authority conferred by the system of federal grants-in-aid, which required state legislatures to provide a state matching grant and local governments to relinquish control over decisions of location and design. The capacity to advance their policy aims through both the advice of experts and the will of the states not only secured the new highway program against renewed opposition in Congress in the 1920s but also won the strong support of the motor vehicle industry and set the stage for even more impressive policy gains of the 1930s when highways became the largest category of federal emergency public works. That collective authority, however, required a high threshold of consensus to secure and maintain, producing not just a narrow one-size-fits-all approach to technical issues but also a striking incapacity to respond to changing conditions. Johnson completes her compelling narrative by identifying the source of the interstate highway plan, first proposed in 1939 and finally funded in 1956, in the internal dynamics of and external threats to that extraconstitutional authority.

The King's Best Highway

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439176108
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The King's Best Highway by : Eric Jaffe

Download or read book The King's Best Highway written by Eric Jaffe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-11 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A VIVID AND FASCINATING LOOK AT AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST STORIED HIGHWAY, THE BOSTON POST ROAD During its evolution from Indian trails to modern interstates, the Boston Post Road, a system of over-land routes between New York City and Boston, has carried not just travelers and mail but the march of American history itself. Eric Jaffe captures the progress of people and culture along the road through four centuries, from its earliest days as the king of England’s “best highway” to the current era. Centuries before the telephone, radio, or Internet, the Boston Post Road was the primary conduit of America’s prosperity and growth. News, rumor, political intrigue, financial transactions, and personal missives traveled with increasing rapidity, as did people from every walk of life. From post riders bearing the alarms of revolution, to coaches carrying George Washington on his first presidential tour, to railroads transporting soldiers to the Civil War, the Boston Post Road has been essential to the political, economic, and social development of the United States. Continuously raised, improved, rerouted, and widened for faster and heavier traffic, the road played a key role in the advent of newspapers, stagecoach travel, textiles, mass-produced bicycles and guns, commuter railroads, automobiles—even Manhattan’s modern grid. Many famous Americans traveled the highway, and it drew the keen attention of such diverse personages as Benjamin Franklin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, P. T. Barnum, J. P. Morgan, and Robert Moses. Eric Jaffe weaves this entertaining narrative with a historian’s eye for detail and a journalist’s flair for storytelling. A cast of historical figures, celebrated and unknown alike, tells the lost tale of this road. Revolutionary printer William Goddard created a postal network that united the colonies against the throne. General Washington struggled to hold the highway during the battle for Manhattan. Levi Pease convinced Americans to travel by stagecoach until, half a century later, Nathan Hale convinced them to go by train. Abe Lincoln, still a dark-horse candidate in early 1860, embarked on a railroad speaking tour along the route that clinched the presidency. Bomb builder Lester Barlow, inspired by the Post Road’s notorious traffic, nearly sold Congress on a national system of expressways twenty-five years before the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. Based on extensive travels of the highway, interviews with people living up and down the road, and primary sources unearthed from the great libraries between New York City and Boston—including letters, maps, contemporaneous newspapers, and long-forgotten government documents—The King’s Best Highway is a delightful read for American history buffs and lovers of narrative everywhere.

America's First Highways

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Author :
Publisher : America's Historic Highways
ISBN 13 : 9781949971118
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis America's First Highways by : Stephen H. Provost

Download or read book America's First Highways written by Stephen H. Provost and published by America's Historic Highways. This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the era of the interstate highway, before there was even a Route 66, there were auto trails. For a brief period in the early 20th century, these privately funded roads bridged the gap between the era of the stagecoach turnpike and the age of the federal highway.With names like the Yellowstone Trail, the National Old Trails Road and the famed Lincoln Highway, they offered the newly unshackled American tourist a way to hit the open road - even if that road was dirt or gravel, and you were liable to get lost along the way.The visionaries who built those roads and the carmakers who made it all possible. Did you know Henry Ford once set the land speed record ... on a frozen lake? Or that the National Football League was founded in an auto dealership? Or that the man behind the Lincoln Highway build the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and made Miami Beach a winter resort?You'll read about the first person to drive from coast to coast in an automobile (with a goggle-wearing bulldog) and the around-the-world contest that inspired the movie The Great Race. You'll also find stories of Dwight Eisenhower's 1919 cross-country trip that helped convince him of the need for an interstate highway system; and the auto camping craze that led to the first motels.But most of all, you'll learn about the auto trails themselves: How they came into being, their role in paving the way our federal highways, and their eventual demise. It's all here in a single volume packed with details and more than 200 historic and modern images. From the author of "Highway 99: The History of California's Main Street" and "Highway 101: The History of El Camino Real," "America's First Highways" is a companion to "Yesterday's Highways" and Volume II in the America's Historic Highways Series.

American Road

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780805072976
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (729 download)

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Book Synopsis American Road by : Pete Davies

Download or read book American Road written by Pete Davies and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Davies recounts these treacherous travels in a brisk and readable style . . . he has put history, sociology, politics, and human nature into well-tuned balance. The Boston Globe

Interstate 69

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 9781439175736
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (757 download)

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Book Synopsis Interstate 69 by : Matt Dellinger

Download or read book Interstate 69 written by Matt Dellinger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interstate 69 is an enlightening journey through the heart of America. With this epic tale of one vast and controversial road project, Matt Dellinger brings to life the country’s complex political, social, and economic landscape. The 1,400-mile extension of I-69 south from Indianapolis, if completed, will connect Canada to Mexico through Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. This so-called NAFTA highway has been in development for two decades, and while segments are under construction today, others may never be built. Eagerly anticipated by many as an economic godsend, I-69 has also been opposed by environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, anarchists, and others who question both the wisdom of building more highways and the merits of globalization. Part history, part travelogue, Interstate 69 reveals the surprising story of how this extraordinary undertaking began, introduces us to the array of individuals who have worked tirelessly for years to build the road—or to stop it—and guides us through the many places the highway would transform forever: from sprawling cities like Indianapolis, Houston, and Memphis to the small rural towns of the Midwestern rust belt, the Mississippi Delta, and South Texas. In an era when bridges fall, levies fail, and states lease their toll roads to foreign-owned corporations, Americans are realizing the central importance of infrastructure, how it affects our standard of living and quality of life and how it determines which places prosper and which places fade. This book illustrates vividly that the story of transportation is indeed the story of America—and that story continues. Matt Dellinger connects these dots with an absorbingly human, on-the-ground examination of our country’s struggle with development. Interstate 69 captures the hopes, dreams, and fears surrounding what we build and what we leave behind.

Blue Highways

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Author :
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316218545
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (162 download)

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Book Synopsis Blue Highways by : William Least Heat-Moon

Download or read book Blue Highways written by William Least Heat-Moon and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

American Autobahn

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780966913606
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (136 download)

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Book Synopsis American Autobahn by : Mark Rask

Download or read book American Autobahn written by Mark Rask and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 12 years of research, plus thousands of miles driving Germany's Autobahn, Rask, a lifelong automotive and racing enthusiast, exposes half-truths and myths about the speed factor in traffic accidents in America. He analyzes the combination of safety and speed on the Autobahn and offers an exciting new direction for America's interstates that would make speeds of 100 mph or more commonplace on open stretches of rural freeway, with far greater safety than ever imagined at 55 mph. Includes bandw photos of highways and vehicles. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

The National Road

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Author :
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1640094938
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis The National Road by : Tom Zoellner

Download or read book The National Road written by Tom Zoellner and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of "eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character" serves to remind us that despite our differences we all belong to the same land (Publishers Weekly). “How was it possible, I wondered, that all of this American land––in every direction––could be fastened together into a whole?” What does it mean when a nation accustomed to moving begins to settle down, when political discord threatens unity, and when technology disrupts traditional ways of building communities? Is a shared soil enough to reinvigorate a national spirit? From the embaattled newsrooms of small town newspapers to the pornography film sets of the Los Angeles basin, from the check–out lanes of Dollar General to the holy sites of Mormonism, from the nation’s highest peaks to the razed remains of a cherished home, like a latter–day Woody Guthrie, Tom Zoellner takes to the highways and byways of a vast land in search of the soul of its people. By turns nostalgic and probing, incisive and enraged, Zoellner’s reflections reveal a nation divided by faith, politics, and shifting economies, but––more importantly––one united by a shared sense of ownership in the common land.

Dixie Highway

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Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469612984
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Dixie Highway by : Tammy Ingram

Download or read book Dixie Highway written by Tammy Ingram and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the Modern South, 1900-1930