Items related to Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America's Main Street
“You’ll never understand America until you’ve driven Route 66—that’s old Route 66—all the way,” a truck driver in California once said to author Rick Antonson. “It’s the most famous highway in the world.”
With some determination, grit, and a good sense of direction, one can still find and drive on 90 percent of the original Route 66 today. This travelogue follows Rick and his travel companion Peter along 2,400 miles through eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles as they discover the old Route 66. With surprising and obscure stories about Route 66 personalities like Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Al Capone, Salvador Dali, Dorothea Lange, Cyrus Avery (the Father of Route 66), the Harvey Girls, Mickey Mantle, and Bobby Troup (songwriter of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”), Antonson’s fresh perspective reads like an easy drive down a forgotten road: winding, stopping now and then to mingle with the locals and reminisce about times gone by, and then getting stuck in the mud, sucked into its charms. Rick mixes hilarious anecdotes of happenstance travel with the route’s difficult history, its rise and fall in popularity, and above all, its place in legend.
The author has committed part of his book’s proceeds to the preservation work of the National Route 66 Federation.
With some determination, grit, and a good sense of direction, one can still find and drive on 90 percent of the original Route 66 today. This travelogue follows Rick and his travel companion Peter along 2,400 miles through eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles as they discover the old Route 66. With surprising and obscure stories about Route 66 personalities like Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Al Capone, Salvador Dali, Dorothea Lange, Cyrus Avery (the Father of Route 66), the Harvey Girls, Mickey Mantle, and Bobby Troup (songwriter of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”), Antonson’s fresh perspective reads like an easy drive down a forgotten road: winding, stopping now and then to mingle with the locals and reminisce about times gone by, and then getting stuck in the mud, sucked into its charms. Rick mixes hilarious anecdotes of happenstance travel with the route’s difficult history, its rise and fall in popularity, and above all, its place in legend.
The author has committed part of his book’s proceeds to the preservation work of the National Route 66 Federation.
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About the Author:
From Booklist:
Rick Antonson is the president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver, and past chair of the board for Destination Marketing Association International, based in Washington, D.C. Rick is the author of the widely acclaimed To Timbuktu for a Haircut: A Journey Through West Africa, coauthor of Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend, and The Fraser Valley.
Their hopes for a trip to Asia dashed, the author (president of Tourism Vancouver and a frequent traveler) and his friend Peter quickly came up with plan B: Route 66, the legendary—and now mostly bypassed—highway that spans nearly 2,500 miles from Illinois to California. The result is this lighthearted travelogue—Rick and Peter being a sort of road-comedy team—but the book also has its bittersweet moments, since to remember Route 66 in its heyday is to remember an America that no longer exists. The book is full of interesting or amazing historical facts (for example, Illinois was the first state to completely pave its portion of Route 66, way back in the Roaring Twenties, because Al Capone needed a good road to transport bootleg liquor). It might be a bit too artsy-fartsy to call the book a road trip into the past, but along the way, Rick and Peter do discover bits of the original Route 66, untouched by the modern world, including a smattering of people who live along the original roadway and who seem to have stepped out of the past. A winning mixture of travelogue and history. --David Pitt
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- PublisherSkyhorse
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 1510734708
- ISBN 13 9781510734708
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages384
- Rating
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Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America's Main Street
Published by
Skyhorse Publishing
(2012)
ISBN 10: 1510734708
ISBN 13: 9781510734708
Used
Hardcover
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 1.61. Seller Inventory # G1510734708I3N10
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