William Least Heat-Moon

I read this in the 80's, around the time it was first published. I remember liking it a lot although for some reason I no longer had my copy. So I recently bought another one, thinking it would be a good time to read it again.
I hated it. Read half way through and decided I had had enough. The guy is full of himself. No one is a real traveler but him. Anyone not in a cheap self-customized van is a tourist and tourists are not OK. Taking photos is not OK -- only for tourists. I didn't want to pick it up and when I did, I couldn't wait to put it down, and finally decided to move on, so to speak.… (plus d'informations)

I wondered if I would find a 600+ page book about a single county in Kansas able to hold my interest. While it took me awhile to get through, reading only a chapter or two each day, the answer was an emphatic yes. The author so completely immerses you in a sense of the place he is exploring, it was impossible to stop reading it. On occasion, I skimmed through some of the "From the Commonplace Books" chapters of citations from other works about Kansas, but I never skipped through the author's own writings. Particularly recommended for fans of the travel genre.… (plus d'informations)

A classic American road trip. Since author William Least Heat Moon is Osage, he’s about as classic American as you can get. In something of a funk over loss of his job and deterioration of his marital relationship, he packs a sleeping bag and some cooking equipment in his van and heads out, passing through Nameless, Tennessee; Ninety-Six, South Carolina; Dime Box, Texas; Shelby, Montana; and miscellaneous other cities, towns, and villages. Least Heat Moon mostly stays on the fringes of the country; he covers the center in a later book, Prairy Earth.

He stops and talks everywhere, and people open up to him; and he does a lot of self-contemplation, thus making this as much an autobiography as a travel book; in fact there isn’t that much description of geography (although there’s quite a bit of history). This is an easy and rewarding read; recommended.… (plus d'informations)