Compulsively Aimless

I mentioned I liked roads. It's a recurring theme of this blog starting with my cross country drive of my own. I've collected a lot of books on roads. Here's one category of books on the history of roadbuilding and of particular American highways.    1.   First Highways of America: A Pictorial History of American Roads and Highways from 1900-1925 , John Butler (1994). A history of the dirt-rock-to-pavement of America's early roads.  Fantastic black and white pictures of early cars, road construction and landscapes.  Bought new. 2.   Coast to Coast by Automobile: The Pioneering Trips, 1899-1908 , Curt McConnell (2000).   A collection of early automobile adventures across the the U.S.  The appendix includes a great chronology of early automobile trips. Bought new.       3.   U.S. 1: America's Original Main Street , Andrew Malcolm, Photographs by Roger Straus III (1991). Sometimes called America's original Main St...

(Updated from 2013 Post) The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground.      --Frank Zappa So every generation has got to tear down t he old and rebel with the new--creative destruction to borrow a term from the economists.  I'm especially fascinated by the art and music scene of Greenwich Village in the 1950s. He re's a s hort li st of some books on my shelf on the l ife of the cultural underground with a heavy slant on New York. 1.  Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (1933).  Before his success as a writer, Orwell lived in near-poverty working as dishwasher and other menial jobs.  This Mostly autobiographical, part novel, Orwell's life among the bottom rung of Bohemians in the early 1930s.  Bought new.       2.  Down and In: Life in the Underground, Ronald Sukenick (1987).    Sukenick tells the history of Greenwich Village and how this small part of Man...

As I buy more books, I'm updating some past lists. Here's one from 2012 with a few additions. Thought this one timely since every presidential election year, Ohio gets some time to be the big man on the Electoral College Campus. And remember, lists are random and incomplete samples of what's on my shelf at a moment in time. I learned the hard way moving to the east coast that Ohio was the Rodney Dangerfield of states. Telling an east or west coaster you’re from Ohio was a guaranteed death-knell to any conversation. The usual response is "oh" followed by an excuse to find the bar for a refill. You may even feel you are suddenly invisible. This is because we lack distinctive identities. There’s no aura of New York sophistication or the hipness of California or Seattle or intellectual superiority of Cambridge. We can’t charm folks with lilting accents, distinctive hats and boots or entice pastoral romantics with our picturesque fall calendars (even though ou...

If you want to organize your adventures and discoveries three different ways: by geography, by person, and by experience.  Here are three on my bookshelf. 1.   The Oxford Book of Exploration, Selected by Robin Hanbury-Tenison (1993).   Excerpts of famous and obscure adventures divided into the seven continents with entries ordered chronologically.  Bought used at an impromptu book sale on the steps of townhouse in Adams Morgan.    2.  Dictionary of Discoveries, I.N. Langnas (1959).    Organized by explorer.  Starts with Luigi, Duke of Abruzzi, Italian mountain climber and participant in Italian Arctic expeditions and ends with Eugen Zintgraff, German explorer of Africa.   Bought used at The Bookshop in Chapel Hill, NC.                3.  The Rand McNally Almanac of Adventure: A Panorama of Danger and Daring, Richard Whittingham (1982).   An attempt to cove...

  I grew up on the Great Lakes.  The lakes were always a backdrop for work, play and history.  During his teenage years, my father worked as a steward on passenger ships between Detroit and Buffalo.  My hometown of Huron, Ohio is the southern most port on the Great Lakes.  In the 1970s, ocean going freighters would come from the Soviet Union or Taiwan to load grain from the town's landmark Pillsbury grain silos.  In next door Sandusky, the coal docks picked up rail cars and tipped trainloads of  Appalachian coal into ship holds.  In the summer, we would boat over to the islands of western lake Erie and take our vacation the northern shore of Lake Michigan.  In junior high, I was fascinated by the fact that Oliver Hazard Perry had won a major naval battle  a few miles off shore during the War of 1812.  I wrote an English paper in middle school on ship wrecks on Lake Erie.  In November of that year was the sinking of the Edmund F...

I grew up around the names of Native Americans.  Sandusky (Wyandot for cold water), on Lake Erie and Huron High School across from Shawnee Place and down the road from Miami Place and Tecumseh Place.  Summers in Northern Michigan looking out t the Manitou Islands and hearing the Chippewa legend of the Sleeping Bear.   To the north, the land of Hiawatha.  Here's my collection of Native American books. 1.  Four American Indians: King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola, Edison Whitney and Frances Perry (1904).   Histories of four great Native American leaders published as a text book for high schools.   Heavy stock paper with illustrations.  Bought used at the State Department Bookstore with a personal library stamp, William Locke. 2.  Indian Stories, Major Cicero Newell (1912).  Also a school book explaining Native American family life, their skills at hunting and fighting.  Focuses mostly on Dakota tribe.  Il...

It's difficult to be objective about yourself.  Sometimes it takes an outsider to offer a different perspective.  As Americans, our natural disposition is to be liked.  But that's not always the case.  Here's my short collection of outsiders who have come to America and reported their findings.  Some admirers; some less so. 1.  Cio America!  An Italian Discovers the U.S.  Beppe Severgnini (1995).   Columbus discovered America and five hundred years later, Italian journalist, Beppe Severgnini, rented a row house in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood and recorded his observations for the next year.  Severgnini offers a wonderful sense of detachment to make his observations amusing showing affection for America but also gently poking fun.  Bought used somewhere. 2.  American Notes: A Journey, Charles Dickens (1842; Fromm edition, 1985).  In 1842, Charles Dickens toured the U.S. writing about Wall Street, the prison...

For two years, I lived ten miles from the Iranian border.  I had always wanted to see it's great religious and historical sites going back to the days of Xerxes and Darius the Great.  But at the time Iran was off limits to Americans and in any case belligerent toward American hikers.  Meanwhile, I collected some books to help me with armchair travel to Iran.  1. Touring Iran, Philip Ward (1971).   The author published a series of tourist guides to middle eastern hot spots (Touring Libya (3 volumes) and Touring Lebanon) back when  A tourist guide adventurous westerners might have been able to travel there in relative safety.  Ward's guide is definitely for the intellectually minded tourist.  Maps, black and white photos, useful words and phrases and basic information about the cities.  Bought used at the State Department Bookstore.   2.  The Legacy of Persia, Ed. by A.J. Arberry (1953).   Collection of histories wr...