First published in 1982, William Least Heat-Moon's account of his journey along the back roads of the United States (marked with the color blue on old highway maps) has become something of a classic. When he loses his job and his wife on the same cold February day, he is struck by inspiration: "A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity."
Driving cross-country in a van named Ghost Dancing, Heat-Moon (the name the Sioux give to the moon of midsummer nights) meets up with all manner of folk, from a man in Grayville, Illinois, "whose cap told me what fertilizer he used" to Scott Chisholm, "a Canadian citizen ... [who] had lived in this country longer than in Canada and liked the United States but wouldn't admit it for fear of having to pay off bets he made years earlier when he first 'came over' that the U.S. is a place no Canadian could ever love." Accompanied by his photographs, Heat-Moon's literary portraits of ordinary Americans should not be merely read, but savored.
This book follows pretty well in the footsteps of another similar book, "Travels with Charley," by John Steinbeck (one of my favorites), and I'm really surprised that I've kept it unread on my bookshelf for so long, seeing as how it's a genre I love.
This is a book I feel that can defeat my low attention span. Those come along rarely.
And, I'm gonna jot these future reads down here, just so I don't forget.
Nudge - A book on behavioural economics and social psychology.
This is Your Brain On Music - About how our brains interpret music; cognitive neuroscience.
Then we came to the End - The downward spiral of a company during the dot-com bust. Should be fun.
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