The American Highway

The American Highway PDF Author: William Kaszynski
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786408221
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Minnesota-based writer and photographer Kazynski traces the transformation of the US from a network of places connected by rutted wagon trails to a maze of highways connected to other highways. He describes and illustrates road and bridge construction and the new roadside culture that threw up motels, restaurants, gas stations, and scenic perspectives.

The American Highway

The American Highway PDF Author: William Kaszynski
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786408221
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Minnesota-based writer and photographer Kazynski traces the transformation of the US from a network of places connected by rutted wagon trails to a maze of highways connected to other highways. He describes and illustrates road and bridge construction and the new roadside culture that threw up motels, restaurants, gas stations, and scenic perspectives.

Building the American Highway System

Building the American Highway System PDF Author: Bruce Edsall Seely
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780877224723
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description


The Longest Line on the Map

The Longest Line on the Map PDF Author: Eric Rutkow
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 150110392X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
From the award-winning author of American Canopy, a dazzling account of the world’s longest road, the Pan-American Highway, and the epic quest to link North and South America, a dramatic story of commerce, technology, politics, and the divergent fates of the Americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Pan-American Highway, monument to a century’s worth of diplomacy and investment, education and engineering, scandal and sweat, is the longest road in the world, passable everywhere save the mythic Darien Gap that straddles Panama and Colombia. The highway’s history, however, has long remained a mystery, a story scattered among government archives, private papers, and fading memories. In contrast to the Panama Canal and its vast literature, the Pan-American Highway—the United States’ other great twentieth-century hemispheric infrastructure project—has become an orphan of the past, effectively erased from the story of the “American Century.” The Longest Line on the Map uncovers this incredible tale for the first time and weaves it into a tapestry that fascinates, informs, and delights. Rutkow’s narrative forces the reader to take seriously the question: Why couldn’t the Americas have become a single region that “is” and not two near irreconcilable halves that “are”? Whether you’re fascinated by the history of the Americas, or you’ve dreamed of driving around the globe, or you simply love world records and the stories behind them, The Longest Line on the Map is a riveting narrative, a lost epic of hemispheric scale.

Rethinking America's Highways

Rethinking America's Highways PDF Author: Robert W. Poole
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022655760X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
A transportation expert makes a provocative case for changing the nation’s approach to highways, offering “bold, innovative thinking on infrastructure” (Rick Geddes, Cornell University). Americans spend hours every day sitting in traffic. And the roads they idle on are often rough and potholed, with exits, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges in terrible disrepair. According to transportation expert Robert Poole, this congestion and deterioration are outcomes of the way America manages its highways. Our twentieth-century model overly politicizes highway investment decisions, short-changing maintenance and often investing in projects whose costs exceed their benefits. In Rethinking America’s Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities—like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully-reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways.

Asphalt and Politics

Asphalt and Politics PDF Author: Thomas L. Karnes
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786442829
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
From animal paths to superhighways, transportation has been the backbone of American expansion and growth. This examination of the interstate highway system in the United States, and the forces that shaped it, includes the introduction of the automobile, the Good Roads Movement, and the Lincoln Highway Association. The book offers an analysis of state and federal road funding, modern road-building options, and the successes and failures of the current highway system. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Open Road

Open Road PDF Author: Phil Patton
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description


Motoring

Motoring PDF Author: John A. Jakle
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820330280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Motoring unmasks the forces that shape the American driving experience--commercial, aesthetic, cultural, mechanical--as it takes a timely look back at our historically unconditional love of motor travel. Focusing on recreational travel between 1900 and 1960, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle cover dozens of topics related to drivers, cars, and highways and explain how they all converge to uphold that illusory notion of release and rejuvenation we call the "open road." Jakle and Sculle have collaborated on five previous books on the history, culture, and landscape of the American road. Here, with an emphasis on the driver's perspective, they discuss garages and gas stations, roadside tourist attractions, freeways and toll roads, truck stops, bus travel, the rise of the convenience store, and much more. All the while, the authors make us think about aspects of driving that are often taken for granted: how, for instance, the many lodging and food options along our highways reinforce the connection between driving and "freedom" and how, by enabling greater speeds, highway engineers helped to stoke motorists' "blessed fantasy of flight." Although driving originally celebrated freedom and touted a common experience, it has increasingly become a highly regulated, isolated activity. The motive behind America's first embrace of the automobile--individual prerogative--still substantially obscures this reality. "Americans did not have the automobile imposed on them," say the authors. Jakle and Sculle ask why some of the early prophetic warnings about our car culture went unheeded and why the arguments of its promoters resonated so persuasively. Today, the automobile is implicated in any number of environmental, even social, problems. As the wisdom of our dependence on automobile travel has come into serious question, reassessment of how we first became that way is more important than ever.

Route 66

Route 66 PDF Author: Arthur Krim
Publisher: George F Thompson Publishing
ISBN: 9781938086168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Winner of the J. B. Jackson Prize for the Best Book in Cultural Geography!

The Drive

The Drive PDF Author: Teresa Bruce
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1580056520
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The Drive follows Teresa Bruce on her 2003 road trip through Mexico and onto the Pan American Highway, in a rickety camper with her old dog and new husband in tow. Bruce first set off on the exact same route in 1973, her parents at the helm and their two young daughters in tow, as a reaction to the accidental death of their youngest child, Bruce's brother John John. Her attempt to follow the route, using her mother's travel journal as an anecdotal guide, is as much about her need for exploration as it is about trying to understand her parents and their pain, and to finally begin to heal her own wounds over the accident. Bruce is immensely talented in bringing scenery of Central and South America to life -- countries from Mexico and Guatemala to Bolivia and Argentina are detailed with her innate attention to detail and sense of storytelling. The Drive details a really incredible journey through these beautiful, at times corrupt and war-torn countries, across roads that are as likely to be barricaded by guerrillas or washed out by floods as they are to be passable. The Drive is travel writing at its best, combining moments of deep heartbreak with unimaginable joy over a panoply of unforgettable settings.

The Road Chose Me Volume 2

The Road Chose Me Volume 2 PDF Author: Dan Grec
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780995198968
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Searching for even more wild places and new experiences, Dan became determined to explore 'off the map' in Africa. From the mighty Sahara Desert in the north to the dense equatorial jungles of the Congo and the open grasslands of Southern Africa, Dan turned his biggest dream into reality. Over the course of three years Dan's second major expedition spanned fifty-four thousand miles through thirty-five unique African countries. THE ADVENTURE WAS A THOUSAND TIMES BIGGER THAN HE DREAMED POSSIBLE. After exploring the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Argentina Dan became hooked on the freedom of global overland travel, and he only wanted more. New languages, exotic foods, stunning landscapes and local people with an entirely different outlook became Dan's everyday life. As the months turned into years, through highlights and despair Dan gained a new appreciation for what it truly means to be alive. Viewing our modern world through African eyes gave Dan a new perspective, and he was pulled in by the endless joy, laughter and kindness at every turn. While the landscapes and wildlife are undeniably breathtaking, it is the natural warmth of the African people that is truly unforgettable. All across the continent Dan was welcomed with love and generosity, and now he will never be the same.