Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America's Main Street
Their hopes for a trip to Asia dashed, the author (president of Tourism Vancouver and a frequent traveler) and his friend Peter quickly came up with plan B: Route 66, the legendary—and now mostly bypassed—highway that spans nearly 2,500 miles from Illinois to California. The result is this lighthearted travelogue—Rick and Peter being a sort of road-comedy team—but the book also has its bittersweet moments, since to remember Route 66 in its heyday is to remember an America that no longer exists. The book is full of interesting or amazing historical facts (for example, Illinois was the first state to completely pave its portion of Route 66, way back in the Roaring Twenties, because Al Capone needed a good road to transport bootleg liquor). It might be a bit too artsy-fartsy to call the book a road trip into the past, but along the way, Rick and Peter do discover bits of the original Route 66, untouched by the modern world, including a smattering of people who live along the original roadway and who seem to have stepped out of the past. A winning mixture of travelogue and history. --David Pitt