Written for the Road...

Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything) turns his attention from science to society in his authoritative history of domesticity, At Home: A Short History of Private Life. While walking through his own home, a former Church of England rectory built in the 19th century, Bryson reconstructs the fascinating history of the household, room by room. With waggish humor and a knack for unearthing the extraordinary stories behind the seemingly commonplace, he examines how everyday items--things like ice, cookbooks, glass windows, and salt and pepper--transformed the way people lived, and how houses evolved around these new commodities. "Houses are really quite odd things," Bryson writes, and, luckily for us, he is a writer who thrives on oddities. He gracefully draws connections between an eclectic array of events that have affected home life, covering everything from the relationship between cholera outbreaks and modern landscaping, to toxic makeup, highly flammable hoopskirts, and other unexpected hazards of fashion. Fans of Bryson's travel writing will find plenty to love here; his keen eye for detail and delightfully wry wit emerge in the most unlikely places, making At Home an engrossing journey through history, without ever leaving the house.

Written for the Road...

The 30th anniversary edition of this classic memoir about growing up in Spanish Harlem includes an afterword reminding us that its streets are even meaner now, thanks to crack cocaine and the dismantling of government poverty programs. As a dark-skinned Puerto Rican, born in 1928, Piri Thomas faced with painful immediacy the absurd contradictions of America's racial attitudes (among people of all colors) in a time of wrenching social change. Three decades have not dimmed the luster of his jazzy prose, rich in Hispanic rhythms and beat-generation slang.

Written for the Road...

In May 2001, 26 Mexican men scrambled across the border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway. Only 12 made it safely across. American Book Awardâ€"winning writer and poet Urrea (Across the Wire; Six Kinds of Sky; etc.), who was born in Tijuana and now lives outside Chicago, tracks the paths those men took from their home state of Veracruz all the way norte. Their enemies were many: the U.S. Border Patrol ("La Migra"); gung-ho gringo vigilantes bent on taking the law into their own hands; the Mexican Federales; rattlesnakes; severe hypothermia and the remorseless sun, a "110 degree nightmare" that dried their bodies and pounded their brains. In artful yet uncomplicated prose, Urrea captivatingly tells how a dozen men squeezed by to safety, and how 14 othersâ€"whom the media labeled the Yuma 14â€"did not. But while many point to the group's smugglers (known as coyotes) as the prime villains of the tragedy, Urrea unloads on, in the words of one Mexican consul, "the politics of stupidity that rules both sides of the border." Mexican and U.S. border policy is backward, Urrea finds, and it does little to stem the flow of immigrants. Since the policy results in Mexicans making the crossing in increasingly forbidding areas, it contributes to the conditions that kill those who attempt it. Confident and full of righteous rage, Urrea's story is a well-crafted mélange of first-person testimony, geographic history, cultural and economic analysis, poetry and an indictment of immigration policy. It may not directly influence the forces behind the U.S.'s southern border travesties, but it does give names and identities to the faceless and maligned "wetbacks" and "pollos," and highlights the brutality and unsustainable nature of the many walls separating the two countries.

Written for the Road...

As he travels through Mexico's Sierra Madre, one of the largest drug-producing regions in the world, British journalist Grant (American Nomads) encounters a rugged landscape where the mythical old Mexico meets the challenges of the new. The birthplace of Pancho Villa and the Apaches' last refuge, the Sierra Madre has long been home to outlaws and eccentric characters that inspired a variety of American westerns. Into this legendary danger zone, with its exceptionally high murder rate, rides Grant—on horseback, though he has never ridden previously. Grant is the finest kind of travel narrator; though fully cognizant of the dangers and foolhardiness of his obsession with this land, he throws himself into crazy situations, such as a quest for buried gold treasure, a sampling of Mexican folk remedies, a terrifying Tarahumara Indian ritual when God gets into his annual drinking bout with the Devil, a little cocaine or blasting parakeet with local drug dealers, and lots and lots of drinking. He narrates these adventures with unflappable charm and humor, risking his life to the reader's benefit, shared fear and delight of discovery. Though eventually worn out by his physically and emotionally challenging journey, Grant still manages to produce a clear-eyed, empathetic account of this complex, fascinating place.

Written for the Road...

The publishers of Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state.

Written for the Road...

Ford's strained debut concerns Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle who, in 1986, has just lost his wife to cancer. After Henry hears that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during WWII have been found in the basement of the Panama Hotel, the narrative shuttles between 1986 and the 1940s in a predictable story that chronicles the losses of old age and the bewilderment of youth. Henry recalls the difficulties of life in America during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American school friend, Keiko, wandered through wartime Seattle. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry, horrified by America's anti-Japanese hysteria, is further conflicted because of his Chinese father's anti-Japanese sentiment. Henry's adult life in 1986 is rather mechanically rendered, and Ford clumsily contrasts Henry's difficulty in communicating with his college-age son, Marty, with Henry's own alienation from his father, who was determined to Americanize him. The wartime persecution of Japanese immigrants is presented well, but the flatness of the narrative and Ford's reliance on numerous cultural cliches make for a disappointing read.

Written for the Road...

Sometimes a writer has to revisit the classics, and here we find that "gonzo journalism"--gutsy first-person accounts wherein the author is part of the story--didn't originate with Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolfe. Aldous Huxley took some mescaline and wrote about it some 10 or 12 years earlier than those others. The book he came up with is part bemused essay and part mystical treatise--"suchness" is everywhere to be found while under the influence. This is a good example of essay writing, journal keeping, and the value of controversy--always--in one's work.

Written for the Road...

The classic novel from the definitive voice of the Beat Generation, Desolation Angels is the story of Kerouac's life just before the publication of On the Road--as told through his fictional self--Jack Duluoz. As he hitches, walks, and talks his way across the world, Duluoz perceives the angel that is in everything. It is life as he sees it.

Written for the Road...

When the president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce is found dead inside a suitcase with his legs sawn off and a rubber alligator stuffed down his throat, news and police locals prefer to believe it's simply another typical South Florida crime. But when letters from a terrorist group, Las Noches de Diciembre, link the man's death to the disappearances of a visiting Shriner and a Canadian tourist, former newsman (now private eye) Brian Keyes intuits that someone is out to kill Florida's tourist trade. His investigation leads him to an old journalism crony obsessed with fury against the state's irresponsible development policies. Miami Herald columnist Hiaasen writes with a seriousness of intent and knack for characterization which, unfortunately, outstrip his comic talents. This is an auspicious solo debut for the serious Hiaasen (he has written three thrillers with William Montalbano), but a lukewarm one for him as a potential comic-absurdist.

Written for the Road...

If you've ever wondered how a frat boy would fare in the Congo, then Thompson (Smile When You're Lying) has written the book for you. It's not just the Congo either; the former Maxim editor and extreme tourism expert also slogs across Mexico City, India and Disney World. Along the way, he encounters elephant penises, eight-year-old boxers and naked gurus who climb into the shower with him. Thompson's stated reason for his extreme tourism is that Americans have grown soft, and he must prove his travel writer toughness by going places he doesn't want to go. Thompson uses a Maxim-derived prose that features present-tense narration and unfortunate similes. Every page is disfigured by a phrase like Flat as the Kinshasa investment market, and brown as a turd.... Thompson poses as an iconoclast, but his critiques skew toward the obvious (he notes that there are two Indias, one rich and one poor, and that Disney runs a very tight ship). Sanctimonious liberals provide one target, as does soccer—not manly enough for Thompson, and they don't score enough goals. In the end, Thompson's observations and strained prose will wear thin on readers.

Written for the Road...

British businessman with a background in accounting and auditing, Clissold joined up with an entrepreneur in the early 1990s and set out to buy shares of Chinese firms and to work to make them more profitable. Within two years, Clissold's venture owned shares in 20 Chinese businesses, with 25,000 employees among them, but the story really centers on Clissold's encounters with the nation's "institutionalized confusion." Firing entrenched middle managers became a protracted process that led to factory riots and employees using company funds to set up competing businesses; the anticorruption bureau demanded cash bribes before opening investigations. Clissold's narrative is somewhat aimless, slipping from one misadventure (taking American fund managers to a condom factory) to the next, and there's a certain amount of too-easy humor derived from the exoticism of Chinese culture (e.g., the inevitable banquet where unusual body parts of rabbit and deer are served). Even in these passages, though, Clissold's fundamental respect for the Chinese culture is unmistakable, and the scenes where he leaves his office and interacts directly with the people can be quite vividly detailed. By the late '90s, millions of dollars poured into the companies yield disastrous results from an investment standpoint (and Clissold himself suffers a heart attack), but the Chinese economy as a whole hums ever more loudly. Crossover appeal of this title may be limited, but business readers are likely to be entertained.

Written for the Road...

Travel and technology journalist Hoffman (Hunting Warbirds) had two motives for penning this tour of the world's most life-threatening modes of transportation, including trains in India, buses in South America, and trucks in Afghanistan: to expose the "parallel reality," obscured by the tourism industry, of millions for whom "travel was still a punishing, unpredictable, and sometimes deadly work of travail"; and for thrills. By the first measure-showing how much of the world gets from place to place-Hoffman is commendably fascinating: his depiction of the horrors people endure just to see family members or get to work is unforgettable. Unfortunately, Hoffman's secondary motive dominates much of the ruminating prose, and it's hard to sympathize with his middle-aged family-man angst when he's subjecting his teenage daughter to a 24-hour ride across South American mountains in a bus with no bathroom. Elsewhere, a powerful description of the Indian train system segues into a tepid quasi-love affair. Readers with the patience to avoid some self-indulgent side-tracks will find much to reconsider during their next tough commute.

Written for the Road...

Invoking Hunter S. Thompson is a risky proposition for young writers, who can be gulled into thinking that chemical intake and sketchy reporting are substitutes for the gonzo great’s keen insight and lacerating wit. Fortunately, although Kohnstamm plays the Thompson card on his first hand, documenting a monumental pub crawl with a coke buddy called “the Doctor,” he soon finds his own voice. Scratching a bite from the travel bug, Kohnstamm walks away from a Wall Street cubicle to accept a poorly paid, impossibly deadlined job updating the Lonely Planet guide to Brazil. Sharp writing and self-deprecating wit add spice to a chronicle of the sometimes absurd world of guidebook writing. (In one memorable scene, he gets thrown out of a hotel he is researching because he looks—accurately—too poor to stay there.) There’s food for thought, too, about Lonely Planet’s journey from backpacker tip sheet to faux-hobo itinerary and the aftereffects of the travel it promotes. Kohnstamm’s hedonism is heroic, but it’s his willingness to think about hedonism’s consequences that makes this worth reading.

Written for the Road...

Van Bergeijk decided he could make a few bucks by buying a rusted-out 1988 Mercedes 190 Diesel in Amsterdam and reselling it in a Third World country. The clunker had 220,000 kilometers on its odometer. The three-month trip takes him from Holland through Morocco, across the Sahara, and into a variety of countries in Africa. Along the way, he runs into such obstacles as minefields, banditry, and a teenage desert guide who loves Tupac lyrics. There isn’t much food or water, but there is no shortage of sandstorms. He is equipped with a bar of soap, some duct tape, and a pair of women’s nylons to patch up his car’s many breakdowns. There’s much more, including a coup that he somehow survived. This has all the makings of a horrendous journey—and it is—but his dauntless, lighthearted style of writing makes the trip sound almost like a romp. --George Cohen

Written for the Road...

Irvine Welsh's controversial first novel, set on the heroin-addicted fringe of working-class youth in Edinburgh, is yet another exploration of the dark side of Scottishness. The main character, Mark Renton, is at the center of a clique of nihilistic slacker junkies with no hopes and no possibilities, and only "mind-numbing and spirit-crushing" alternatives in the straight world they despise. This particular slice of humanity has nothing left but the blackest of humor and a sharpness of wit. American readers can use the glossary in the back to translate the slang and dialect--essential, since the dialogue makes the book. This is a bleak vision sung as musical comedy.

Written for the Road...

Hubert Selby's 1978 novel "Requiem for a Dream" must certainly rank as one of the most effective depictions of addiction ever written. A critically acclaimed film of the same name, released in 2000 and directed by Darren Aronofsky, has brought more attention to the novel. Although I have yet to see the film, I decided to read the book before watching the movie because I wanted to know what dark visions await me when I finally slide that DVD into the player. If the story is any indication, the film promises a devastating experience. This is not a sunshine and smiles book. It is an unflinching look at addiction and its consequences.
There are four central characters in "Requiem for a Dream." There is Sara Goldfarb, a lonely widow who spends her days watching television, eating chocolate covered cherries, and pining for her late husband Seymour. Harry Goldfarb, Sara's black sheep of a son, is another main character. Harry's circle of acquaintances includes his girlfriend Marion, an intelligent, attractive young girl with a talent for painting but paralyzed with defeatist and self-loathing feelings. Harry's best friend is Tyrone C. Love, a young black man who grew up poor in Harlem but would like to escape from the harsh realities of the street. While minor characters come and go during the course of the story, Selby focuses on these four in an attempt to show the trajectory of doom associated with addiction.

Things do not seem to go very wrong throughout the first part of the book. It is summer in New York City and time for fun and sun. Harry, Tyrone, and Marion spend their time partying with their friends, listening to music, and enjoying each other's company. Sara watches her television shows and eats her candy in blissful peace, only occasionally worrying about what her son Harry is up to. Even better news lands in the laps of our four characters in short order. Sara receives a phone call from a company that finds contestants for game shows, promising her that all she need do is fill out a questionnaire and she will have the chance to appear on television. Sara is of course elated, and decides that if she really has a shot at winning some dough she should probably go on a diet and lose a few pounds in order to look her best. Meanwhile, Tyrone and Harry implement serious plans to obtain a pound of pure heroin so they can get rich and retire from street life. After putting in a grinding week working, the two earn enough money to purchase some drugs and begin dealing to people they know on the street. As the money flies in, Marion and Harry start making plans to someday open their own little business. Even though the three are users and breaking the law by dealing drugs, the future seems bright.

Then winter arrives. Things start to fall apart for Sara, Harry, Marion, and Tyrone. For Sara, an attempt at a diet found in a book does not have the expected payoff. At the recommendation of a neighbor, she goes to a local doctor who prescribes diet pills. Sara's cheery demeanor gradually erodes under the duress of non-reply from the game show company and the slavery of the pills. Harry, Marion, and Tyrone are no better off. Their heroin supply dries up, reducing the trio to scrounging for drugs just as their compulsion grows worse. The deterioration of the four protagonists quickly escalates into a bleak and depressing free fall of pain and degradation.

All four individuals suffer untold horrors by the end of the book, but I think the most pathetic account concerns Sara. Here is a lady who seems harmless, who only wants the best for her son and tries to get through lonely days laced with the pain of losing her husband. She fervently believes she will get on television if she can only muster enough self-control to quit overeating. Her naiveté about the dangers of diet pills leads to disaster merely because she has no conception that there are doctors who are quacks. Sara's innocence makes for a truly poignant story. I had less sympathy for the other three characters. Since none of them are idiots by any means, they knew the dangers of drugs but fell into the old trap of "that can't happen to me." That does not lessen the message of the book, but it does make Sara stand apart.

The writing style of the author is quite unorthodox. There are no chapters, no quotation marks, and sentences that run on for miles. This does make it difficult at first to discern who is talking and to whom, but by the time a few dozen pages pass by it makes little difference in the flow of the story. Selby instills Tyrone with a noticeable street accent, and Sara is often alone when we see the sections dealing with her, so do not worry about the format of the novel.

You cannot escape the theme of addictions in this tale. But what is interesting about it is that Selby equates all excessive compulsions. Heroin usage is as damaging to the soul as is obsessive television viewing or overeating. All have the potential to lead to utter destruction whether you are a young kid roaming the streets or a middle-aged widow who rarely leaves the apartment.

In an introduction to this edition of the book, Selby writes a powerful statement about his tale. He says that "Requiem for a Dream" is about what happens when we concern ourselves more with getting than giving in life, and that the book is an examination of what happens when people chase the illusions of the dream of consumerism and materialism instead of following the truth in their hearts. For a powerful story, look no further than this tale.

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This unabashedly lurid and often highly entertaining book traces Stahl's rise from Hustler staffer, to highly paid prime-time television writer, to his breakneck devolution into self-loathing junkie father and "author of nothing but bad checks." While stumbling cheerily toward rock bottom, he somehow managed to keep landing such plum assignments as writing for Moonlighting and thirtysomething. But fans hoping for backstage gossip about their favorite shows will be disappointed. For all the rivers of every conceivable narcotic flowing here, there is surprisingly little inside dope. "The truth: This book... is less... an exercise in recall than exorcism." Stahl's manic wise-cracking never wavers, whether he is describing his remote and suicidal parents or a grandmotherly babysitter who forced him to lick Jujubes off her nipples every day after school. While Stahl managed to survive his fall with enough "real funny" intact to provoke some grossed-out laughs, what seems meant as a hilarious memoir of his drug-besotted depression too often becomes just a depressing memoir of his hilarity. A study in self-absorption.

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For a teenage diary, this is extremely well written. Jim Carroll was clearly a gifted writer, and his diary brings the New York City streets of the mid-60's to life. His vivid descriptions of growing up as a street wise kid on the mean streets of the city clearly paint a picture of the period.

That said, this is was NOT a fun book to read. There is much about Carroll's life in this period that is not pretty. His growing dependency on drugs is readily apparent as the book progresses, as is his willingness to do almost anything to pay for his next fix. There are graphic descriptions of both the drug use and his sexual encounters, but even so there is a sense of honesty in the account that somehow seems to be redeeming. In the end, this is a powerful glimpse into a life on the streets.

Written for the Road...

This first volume of the correspondence of Hunter S. Thompson begins with a high school essay and runs up through the publication of Thompson's breakout book, Hell's Angels. Thompson apparently never threw a letter away, so the reader has the treat of experiencing the full evolution of his pyrotechnic writing style, rant by rant. The letters--to girlfriends, to bill collectors, to placers of "Help Wanted" ads, to editors and publishers--are usually spiced with political commentary. The style and the political animus always seem to drive each other. For instance, an 11/22/63 letter to novelist and friend William J. Kennedy about the day's cataclysm is apparently the birthplace of the signal phrase "fear and loathing." (Thompson summed up the Kennedy assassination thus: "The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency.") And the willingness to write strangers is stunning: this collection includes Thompson's letter to LBJ seeking appointment to the governorship of American Samoa. You might have thought Garry Trudeau was exaggerating in his Doonesbury characterization of the Thompson-based character Duke. He was not.

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In Man vs. Wild, Bear Grylls demonstrates all manner of survival techniques when faced with nature's extremes--from crossing piranha-infested rivers to fighting off grizzly bears. He shows us how, armed with the correct know-how and a determination to stay alive, all of us have the potential to beat the elements in even the bleakest of situations.
Bear Grylls is the ultimate modern-day adventurer. He spent three years with the British Special Forces (21 SAS), only leaving when a near-fatal parachuting accident broke his back in three places. Just two years later, Grylls followed his childhood dream and became one of the youngest climbers ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He is the host of the Discovery Channel series Man vs. Wild, where viewers tune in to watch Grylls show what it takes to find your way out of the most inhospitable places on earth with little more than the clothes on your back.

Now, in his book, he shows his millions of fans worldwide how to do what he does in an utterly entertaining crash course in surviving every kind of hard ecosystem--mountain, sub-zero terrain, jungle, desert, and the sea. Grylls takes readers on a journey to the corners of the earth and recreates disaster scenarios such as being stranded on a desert island or lost in the snowy Arctic. Perfect for armchair adventurers and extreme sports buffs alike, Man vs. Wild is destined to become a classic in adventure literature.