Destination: USA
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Travel Literature
The American travelogue is its own literary genre, and many of the classics remain both enjoyable and relevant. In Democracy in America (1835-40), Alexis de Tocqueville distilled the philosophical underpinnings of the then-new American experiment, and it remains a first-rate, even pithy assessment of American sensibilities.
Mark Twain spent seven years going west - from St Louis to Virginia City, Nevada, and thence to San Francisco and Hawaii - in the hopes of making his fortune. Roughing It (1872) is his hilarious account of every indignity suffered along the way.
Those who prefer their commentary, like their coffee, bitter and black should stuff The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945) by Henry Miller in their bag. The irascible Miller canvassed America during WWII, and the similarities to now are startling.
Celebrated travel writer Jan Morris was clearly smitten with America in Coast to Coast (1956); her account is crisp, clear and elegantly thoughtful. Her experiences in the pre-Civil Rights South are truly poignant.
No book has done more to spur cross-country travel than Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957). His headlong jazz style and lust for life inspire people still.
You could wish for no better companion and guide than John Steinbeck, who late in life set out with his poodle in a makeshift camper to reacquaint himself with America. Travels with Charley (1962) is sharp, funny, noble and filled with wise, road-tested advice.
At a crossroad in life, William Least Heat-Moon set out on a 13,000-mile circuit of America's back roads. The poetic result, Blue Highways (1982), is a moving pastiche of everyday Americans as it follows one man's attempt to find himself by losing himself.
On the Rez (2000) by Ian Frazier is not strictly a travelogue, but it gives a good taste of what it's like to be friends with an Oglala Sioux, and of what Native American and reservation life is like today. It is a journey of miles and history and heart that goes into America, rather than across it.
With a restless spirit and buoyant wry humor, Brad Herzog tours the tiny, famously named towns of America (Paris, London, Mecca) in Small World (2004), meeting regular folks, pondering his own fatherhood, asking good questions and living the journey.
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