Greetings from Route 66: The Ultimate Road Trip Back Through Time Along America's Main Street

by Michael Karl Witzel (Contributor), Jim Hinckley (Contributor), Kerrick James (Contributor)

John Steinbeck famously christened Route 66 America’s “Mother Road” in The Grapes of Wrath , and that chapter about Tom Joad’s exodus is just one of the classic pieces collected in this ultimate anthology. Here’s history, roadside attractions, pop culture, ghost stories—even recipes from famous greasy spoons. And it’s all illustrated with the largest collection of vintage art, postcards, travel decals, collectibles, and other memorabilia ever amassed. This is a truly a worthy tribute to the Main Street of America.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, American History, History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2010

Reviews

[Viridian5 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating Greetings from Route 66: The Ultimate Road Trip Back Through Time Along America's Main Street by Michael Karl Witzel was very difficult because I love the subject and the collection of vintage maps, postcards, menus, and pennants and vintage and newer photographs of locations but a lot of the text is a badly edited mess. It's full of typos, like the one where Buster Burris retires "at more than eight years of age." Some sentences go nowhere or end abruptly in the wrong place. Some of the phrasings are awkward. Factoids are often reiterated in various places in the book, while the repetiton sometimes subtly or totally contradicts prior mentions. You would think "today" would refer to the time of writing or publishing the book but can actually mean any old time, as in the caption for a sad photo of the Blue Whale "in decay today" even though the text nearby says preservationists started restoring the Blue Whale and its surroundings in 2002, eight years before the book was published.

The text also mentions that the whale had a derby hat, but not even the vintage images of the whale show it. Sometimes interesting sounding signs and buildings are mentioned, but there aren't any photos. It would have been nice to have the years attached to the photos and images of various ephemera because the book covers several decades, but not even the more modern photographs give you a clue as to when they were taken. I also would have liked to see some of the restorations in original form, decline, and then renovated.

All this is very sad for me, because the topic and history deserve better. (Route 66 is part of my bucket list.) Despite all the flaws, the book did make me want to see certain parts of New Mexico and Arizona. The vintage photos, postcards, maps, menus, and pennants are wonderful and really give you a taste of a different age, when multi-national franchises hadn't yet bleached all the local quirk out of places. I couldn't help feeling for the towns and livelihoods destroyed when the state realigned the route or ran a new highway in elsewhere to leech off the traffic and customers.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of cool photos and interesting historical articles tracing US-66 from Chicago to Santa Monica - A fun read, having traveled Route 66 as a kid.

[Bea Elwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyment of this book would have been greatly increased if someone at the publishers had bothered to read it before printing large quanities. The typos in this book are ridiculous, and the repetition gets, well, repetitive. But still I dream of one day travelling Route 66 from end to beginning (I have to be different) and this very well researched book adds inspiration to the dream.

[Beka Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this and want to find books like this about other major road systems since I take a big road trip once a year or so.

[Brooke Norman]

I liked the pictures. -Abby
This book told us a lot of facts about states. -Luke
I liked the letters the characters wrote. -Demi
Very interesting! -Olivia