Download or read book The King s Best Highway written by Eric Jaffe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-22 with total page 434 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.
Download or read book The Lincoln Highway written by Amor Towles and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates
Download or read book No Simple Highway written by Peter Richardson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For almost three decades, the Grateful Dead was America's most popular touring band. No Simple Highway is the first book to ask the simple question of why—and attempt to answer it. Drawing on new research, interviews, and a fresh supply of material from the Grateful Dead archives, author Peter Richardson vividly recounts the Dead's colorful history, adding new insight into everything from the Acid Tests to the band's formation of their own record label to their massive late career success, while probing the riddle of the Dead's vast and durable appeal. Arguing that the band successfully tapped three powerful utopian ideals—for ecstasy, mobility, and community—it also shows how the Dead's lived experience with these ideals struck deep chords with two generations of American youth and continues today. Routinely caricatured by the mainstream media, the Grateful Dead are often portrayed as grizzled hippy throwbacks with a cult following of burned-out stoners. No Simple Highway corrects that impression, revealing them to be one of the most popular, versatile, and resilient music ensembles in the second half of the twentieth century. The band's history has been well-documented by insiders, but its unique and sustained appeal has yet to be explored fully. At last, this legendary American musical institution is given the serious and entertaining examination it richly deserves.
Download or read book Last Water on the Devil s Highway written by Bill Broyles and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2014-02-06 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The DevilÕs HighwayÑEl Camino del DiabloÑcrosses hundreds of miles and thousands of years of Arizona and Southwest history. This heritage trail follows a torturous route along the U.S. Mexico border through a lonely landscape of cactus, desert flats, drifting sand dunes, ancient lava flows, and searing summer heat. The most famous waterhole along the way is Tinajas Altas, or High Tanks, a series of natural rock basins that are among the few reliable sources of water in this notoriously parched region. Now an expert cast of authors describes, narrates, and explains the human and natural history of this special place in a thorough and readable account. Addressing the latest archaeological and historical findings, they reveal why Tinajas Altas was so important and how it related to other waterholes in the arid borderlands. Readers can feel like pioneers, following in the footsteps of early Native Americans, Spanish priests and soldiers, gold seekers and borderland explorers, tourists, and scholars. Combining authoritative writing with a rich array of more than 180 illustrations and maps as well as detailed appendixes providing up-to-date information on the wildlife and plants that live in the area, Last Water on the DevilÕs Highway allows readers to uncover the secrets of this fascinating place, revealing why it still attracts intrepid tourists and campers today.
Download or read book Highway 25 in the Carolinas A Brief History written by Anne Peden and Jim Scott and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traveling US 25 through the Carolinas today is a much more pleasant experience than it was in the 1700s. Then, the road from the Tennessee Cherokee Towns to Augusta, Georgia, was a Cherokee trading path that followed a bison trace to the navigable port on the Savannah River. Drovers came from as far as Kentucky herding hogs, turkeys and mules. Lowcountry South Carolinians traveled by stagecoach and wagon to the foothills and mountains, staying for months. The Augusta Road, Saluda Gap and Buncombe Turnpike became the Dixie Highway Carolina Division and then US Route 25 by 1931. Authors Anne Peden and Jim Scott travel the trading path and concrete highway to explore this fascinating history.
Download or read book Kentucky s Frontier Highway written by Karl Raitz and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eighteenth-century Kentucky beckoned to hunters, surveyors, and settlers from the mid-Atlantic coast colonies as a source of game, land, and new trade opportunities. Unfortunately, the Appalachian Mountains formed a daunting barrier that left only two primary roads to this fertile Eden. The steep grades and dense forests of the Cumberland Gap rendered the Wilderness Road impassable to wagons, and the northern route extending from southeastern Pennsylvania became the first main thoroughfare to the rugged West, winding along the Ohio River and linking Maysville to Lexington in the heart of the Bluegrass. Kentucky's Frontier Highway reveals the astounding history of the Maysville Road, a route that served as a theater of local settlement, an engine of economic development, a symbol of the national political process, and an essential part of the Underground Railroad. Authors Karl Raitz and Nancy O'Malley chart its transformation from an ancient footpath used by Native Americans and early settlers to a central highway, examining the effect that its development had on the evolution of transportation technology as well as the usage and abandonment of other thoroughfares, and illustrating how this historic road shaped the wider American landscape.
Download or read book Roadside History written by Melba Porter Hay and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2002-04-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published by the Kentucky Historical Society and distributed by the University Press of Kentucky We have all spied them as we blast down I-75 scanning the roadside for anything of interest or rolled past one while trying to find an elusive gas station in an unfamiliar small town. Perhaps we have even stopped to read one outside the local courthouse. Since 1949, the Kentucky Historical Highway Marker program has erected more than 1,800 markers that highlight the rich diversity of the state's local and regional history as well as topics of statewide, and sometimes national, importance. They provide on-the-spot Kentucky history lessons, depicting subjects as diverse as a seven-year-old boy who served as a drummer in the Revolutionary War to a centuries-old sassafras tree. Roadside History is a key to the markers, enabling travelers to read Kentucky history without stopping to see each marker as they pass. There are two indexes arranged by subject and county.
Download or read book The Black Soldiers Who Built the Alaska Highway written by John Virtue and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-11-16 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first detailed account of the 5,000 black troops who were reluctantly sent north by the United States Army during World War II to help build the Alaska Highway and install the companion Canol pipeline. Theirs were the first black regiments deployed outside the lower 48 states during the war. The enlisted men, most of them from the South, faced racial discrimination from white officers, were barred from entering any towns for fear they would procreate a "mongrel" race with local women, and endured winter conditions they had never experienced before. Despite this, they won praise for their dedication and their work. Congress in 2005 said that the wartime service of the four regiments covered here contributed to the eventual desegregation of the Armed Forces.
Download or read book Marking Our Past written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For 65 years, travelers in West Virginia have enjoyed the inscriptions found on hundreds of historical markers along the state's highways and byways. Now, the information from all these markers is available in one handy volume. With complete inscriptions arranged geographically by county, more than 100 historic photographs, and a brief history of West Virginia's marker program, this book is the most comprehensive collection to date of these popular reminders of the Mountain State's rich past.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Route 66 written by Michael Wallis and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1990 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the legendary road, Route 66, begun in the early 1920s that covered 2400 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Download or read book Yesterday s Highways written by Stephen H. Provost and published by . This book was released on 2020-02-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relive the history of the American highway from its origins in the era of the covered wagon through the age of the interstate. Illustrated with more than 400 images from roads across the country, "Yesterday's Highways" takes you back to the old auto trails that paved the way for the first federal highway system. You'll visit the diners, motels, filling stations and quirky roadside haunts of yesteryear. From White Castle to Howard Johnson's, learn about how the American road served up burgers and coffee and blue-plate specials to weary truckers and vacationing families. Journey back to the age of auto camps and revisit the time when mom-and-pop motel courts ruled the side of the road. Before the advent of off-ramps and car-pool lanes, highways zigzagged through downtowns across the heartland, turning at stop signs and following rail lines. Cars chugged along at 15 mph over gravel roads and narrow, concrete ribbons with dozens of hairpin turns. Drivers were treated to barn ads and billboards and Burma-Shave signs. The Lincoln Highway. Route 66. Highway 99. El Camino Real. The Great Valley Road. Travel back in time and experience what made these roads and so many others the lifeblood of the American experience.
Download or read book The History Highway written by Dennis A. Trinkle and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 2006 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guide to history sites on the web for students, teachers and researchers. Offers the most current coverage of historical information available on the Internet. All sites have been thoroughly checked by specialists in the relevant field of history. Covers U.S. and World history.
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.
Download or read book The Drive written by Teresa Bruce and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Drive follows Teresa Bruce on her 2003 road trip through Mexico and onto the Pan American Highway, in a rickety camper with her old dog and new husband in tow. Bruce first set off on the exact same route in 1973, her parents at the helm and their two young daughters in tow, as a reaction to the accidental death of their youngest child, Bruce's brother John John. Her attempt to follow the route, using her mother's travel journal as an anecdotal guide, is as much about her need for exploration as it is about trying to understand her parents and their pain, and to finally begin to heal her own wounds over the accident. Bruce is immensely talented in bringing scenery of Central and South America to life -- countries from Mexico and Guatemala to Bolivia and Argentina are detailed with her innate attention to detail and sense of storytelling. The Drive details a really incredible journey through these beautiful, at times corrupt and war-torn countries, across roads that are as likely to be barricaded by guerrillas or washed out by floods as they are to be passable. The Drive is travel writing at its best, combining moments of deep heartbreak with unimaginable joy over a panoply of unforgettable settings.
Download or read book The Fasting Highway Graeme Currie from Australia Takes You on a Journey Through the Highs and Lows of Beating a Crippling Food Addiction B written by Graeme Currie and published by Independent Publisher. This book was released on 2020-11-28 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A motivational story from Australia that follows one mans incredible 60kg (132pound) weight loss by living an intermittent fasting lifestyle that you can do too.Graeme Currie overcame a chronic sugar and fast-food addiction that had affected his entire adult life. Because he has actually lived through the highs and lows of a weight loss journey, his story is relatable and easily resonates with everyday men and women who are in a similar situation and want to change their lives. Graeme takes you through his journey step by step - how he did it, what he ate when he ate and offers a great insight into actually making intermittent fasting a permanent sustainable lifestyle.He has successfully lived a healthy life and has easily maintained his current weight for nearly two years. Graeme writes in a raw, and honest way without overcomplicating what is easy to follow a simple process. He has guided countless people around the world, has built up a huge following across social media platforms and is the host of the popular podcast "The Fasting Highway" which has nearly 40,000 plays. A great read for anyone who thinks the mountain is too high to climb in retaking their health.
Download or read book The Longest Line on the Map written by Eric Rutkow and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning author of American Canopy, a dazzling account of the world’s longest road, the Pan-American Highway, and the epic quest to link North and South America, a dramatic story of commerce, technology, politics, and the divergent fates of the Americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Pan-American Highway, monument to a century’s worth of diplomacy and investment, education and engineering, scandal and sweat, is the longest road in the world, passable everywhere save the mythic Darien Gap that straddles Panama and Colombia. The highway’s history, however, has long remained a mystery, a story scattered among government archives, private papers, and fading memories. In contrast to the Panama Canal and its vast literature, the Pan-American Highway—the United States’ other great twentieth-century hemispheric infrastructure project—has become an orphan of the past, effectively erased from the story of the “American Century.” The Longest Line on the Map uncovers this incredible tale for the first time and weaves it into a tapestry that fascinates, informs, and delights. Rutkow’s narrative forces the reader to take seriously the question: Why couldn’t the Americas have become a single region that “is” and not two near irreconcilable halves that “are”? Whether you’re fascinated by the history of the Americas, or you’ve dreamed of driving around the globe, or you simply love world records and the stories behind them, The Longest Line on the Map is a riveting narrative, a lost epic of hemispheric scale.
Download or read book The Road Taken written by Henry Petroski and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned historian and engineer explores the past, present, and future of America's crumbling infrastructure. Acclaimed engineer and historian Henry Petroski explores our core infrastructure from both historical and contemporary perspectives, explaining how essential their maintenance is to America's economic health. Petroski reveals the genesis of the many parts of America's highway system--our interstate numbering system, the centerline that divides roads, and such taken-for-granted objects as guardrails, stop signs, and traffic lights--all crucial to our national and local infrastructure. A compelling work of history, The Road Taken is also an urgent clarion call aimed at American citizens, politicians, and anyone with a vested interest in our economic well-being. Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, and Petroski reveals the complex and challenging interplay between government and industry inherent in major infrastructure improvement. The road we take in the next decade toward rebuilding our aging infrastructure will in large part determine our future national prosperity.
