The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean Author: Philip Caputo | Language: English | ISBN:
B009LRWU9M | Format: EPUB
The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean Description
In The Longest Road, one of America’s most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large.
Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take shape: How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he’d drive from the nation’s southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to everyday Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.
So it was that in 2011, in an America more divided than in living memory, Caputo, his wife, and their two English setters made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as “Fred” and “Ethel”) from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 16,000 miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today’s United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could cause us to pull apart.
- File Size: 1021 KB
- Print Length: 320 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0805094466
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (July 16, 2013)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B009LRWU9M
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,548 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Books > Travel > Polar Regions > Arctic - #2
in Books > Travel > United States > Florida > Keys - #24
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > United States > Regions
- #1
in Books > Travel > Polar Regions > Arctic - #2
in Books > Travel > United States > Florida > Keys - #24
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > United States > Regions
Primarily a journalist and a writer of novels, Philip Caputo wanders off the beaten path smack into the Travel genre with his latest book The Longest Road. He takes us on a road trip from Key West, Florida to Deadhorse, Alaska on the Arctic Ocean, or, if you like. from the southernmost point to northernmost point of the United States -- that one would be able to drive between.
The 'longest road' trip was an idea that festered a while with Caputo. It germinated way back in 1996 when the author, on a hunting and fishing expedition up on Barter Island near Deadhorse, mused over the idea of Inuit children at the island's only school pledging allegiance to the same flag as Cuban-American children living on another island: his old stomping grounds of Key West some six thousand miles southeast. For reasons unknown to Caputo, the notion of the transverse journey "went dormant", burrowed away "cicada-like" for fourteen years. But he can pinpoint just what woke up the idea: mortality. The death of his father, a traveling journeyman who had always inspired his own inner nomad, in 2010 quickened some biological Timex within him. At age 71 there was no time like the present for an epic journey.
So much for the premise, how about the purpose. Besides the obvious novelty of geographical conquest, just what is the underlying goal here? Is there something the author wants to accomplish or discover on this trek? Well, it turns out there is a question he's been dying to have answered. It's a poll-like question: "What holds us together?" What is it that unites our great nation from coast to coast and from Key West to Deadhorse? Caputo is determined to slog across the deep south, the breadbasket, the Pacific Northwest on up through Canada and back into Seward's Folly to find out.
I selected this book because I have a big case of wanderlust, and I knew that the author would offer plenty of tips and tidbits about traveling across America. He and his wife and two dogs went from south to north, and they traveled pulling an Airstream trailer named Ethel. We plan to travel from east to west in a Toyota Highlander and stay in motels. Caputo and his wife learned so much that they became what he called "roads scholars." I learned quite a lot about this great county and its people and places from Caputo's experiences.
Basically a travel journal with hundreds of facts and interesting details, this book is a must read for anyone setting traveling across America. Caputo and Leslie left Key West, Florida and ended their trip in Deadhorse, Alaska, a town that he calls "the strangest and ugliest town in the country, so ugly that it's fascinating." Along the way, they met and spent time with quite a variety of folks of all ages, socioeconomic statuses, and races. From doing some relief work in Alabama to visiting the Custer Battlefield, their journey was quite interesting.
While there's too much richness in the book to do the stories justice, I nevertheless want to mention a few things that further kindled my travel yen. Caputo calls the Nebraska Sandhills one of the "lonesomest regions in the country," and his wife fell for the Ozarks. "Have you noticed how ever noticed how every square inch is covered in green?" she asked him. Caputo's conversations with people as diverse as Cole in South Dakota to Wiren in Chicken, Alaska reminded me of how awesome and varied America's people are.
Another plus to The Longest Road are the frequent references to writers such as Steinbeck William Heat Moon, and Walt Whitman.
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