As a child growing up in Malaysia, Shing Yin Khor had two very different ideas of what “America” meant. The first looked a lot like Hollywood, full of beautiful people and sunlight and freeways. The second looked more like The Grapes of Wrath - a nightmare landscape filled with impoverished people, broken-down cars, barren landscapes, and broken dreams. Those contrasting ideas have stuck with Shing ever since, even now that she lives and works in LA. The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 is Shing’s attempt to find what she can of both of these Americas on a solo journey (small adventure-dog included) across the entire expanse of that iconic road, beginning in Santa Monica and ending up Chicago. And what begins as a road trip ends up as something more like a pilgrimage in search of an American landscape that seems forever shifting, forever out of place.

Tells the story of the legendary road, Route 66, begun in the early 1920s that covered 2400 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles.

In this engaging biography of a remarkable man, Susan Croce Kelly begins by describing the urgency for “good roads” that gripped the nation in the early twentieth century as cars multiplied and mud deepened. Avery was one of a small cadre of men and women whose passion carried the Good Roads movement from boosterism to political influence to concrete-on-the-ground. While most stopped there, Avery went on to assure that one road—U.S. Highway 66—became a fixture in the imagination of America and the world.

Route 66 Treasures offers an exciting new history of the Main Street of America, including more than a dozen facsimile re-creations of rare memorabilia from throughout the decades.

Follow much-loved Scottish comedian Billy Connolly across Route 66 on this unforgettable journey, filled with music, modern history and hilarious stories. Billy Connolly first dreamed of taking a trip on the legendary Route 66 when he heard Chuck Berry belting out one of the greatest rock 'n' roll records of all time - and now he's finally had the chance to do it. Travelling every one of its 2,278 miles on his custom-make motorbike, Billy's journey takes him past many of the best-known icons in the US: the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, and the funky neon-lit gas stations and diners that once lined the route. Billy also has the chance to get to know the people who call it home, from Mervin the Amish carpenter, to fellow banjo enthusiast and obsessive instrument collector Rob, to Angel, one of the many people determined to keep the spirit of the Mother Road alive. Funny, touching and inspiring in equal measure, the tales he gathers on the way tell the story of modern America. With his unrivalled instinct for a good story, and the gregariousness that has made him a comedy legend, Billy Connolly is the ultimate guide to the ultimate road trip.

A place of no mercy, no coddling, and no emotion, the streets of New York don’t waiver in their inability to care for anyone. In order to survive, you have to take the lessons that are given to you by them and use them to your advantage. After being orphaned not once, but twice, raised by nuns, foster parents, and passed between the homes of his grandmother and father, Jim Fiume learned how to survive and thrive after being tossed aside. His experiences led him to where he is now and helped give him wisdom that can only be gained from the university of the streets. Based on the life of Jim Fiume, the experiences from his childhood, adolescence, and a once-in-a-lifetime road trip down Route 66 are recounted in order to teach the one kind of lesson that can never be learned in a classroom… how to be street smart.

Reflections on America and the American experience as he has lived and observed it by the bestselling author of The Greatest Generation, whose iconic career in journalism has spanned more than fifty years From his parents’ life in the Thirties, on to his boyhood along the Missouri River and on the prairies of South Dakota in the Forties, into his early journalism career in the Fifties and the tumultuous Sixties, up to the present, this personal story is a reflection on America in our time. Tom Brokaw writes about growing up and coming of age in the heartland, and of the family, the people, the culture and the values that shaped him then and still do today. His father, Red Brokaw, a genius with machines, followed the instincts of Tom’s mother Jean, and took the risk of moving his small family from an Army base to Pickstown, South Dakota, where Red got a job as a heavy equipment operator in the Army Corps of Engineers’ project building the Ft. Randall dam along the Missouri River. Tom Brokaw describes how this move became the pivotal decision in their lives, as the Brokaw family, along with others after World War II, began to live out the American Dream: community, relative prosperity, middle class pleasures and good educations for their children. “Along the river and in the surrounding hills, I had a Tom Sawyer boyhood,” Brokaw writes; and as he describes his own pilgrimage as it unfolded—from childhood to love, marriage, the early days in broadcast journalism, and beyond—he also reflects on what brought him and so many Americans of his generation to lead lives a long way from home, yet forever affected by it. Praise for A Long Way from Home “[A] love letter to the . . . people and places that enriched a ‘Tom Sawyer boyhood.’ Brokaw . . . has a knack for delivering quirky observations on small-town life. . . . Bottom line: Tom’s terrific.”—People “Breezy and straightforward . . . much like the assertive TV newsman himself.”—Los Angeles Times “Brokaw writes with disarming honesty.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Brokaw evokes a sense of community, a pride of citizenship, and a confidence in American ideals that will impress his readers.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch

- Take a step back and look into the experiences of a little girl growing up in Detroit with her two older sisters. - When the Shrine Circus was in town, her dad brought home clowns in costume, a bear trainer and a trapeze artist. - The adventures of the author and her sisters at boarding school. - The tragedy of losing her daughter Julie in a head-on collision, leaving a young husband and two little boys. - You'll laugh at the incident of the elephant on the roof, the wasp and the negligee, and the police almost arresting Santa Clause. - The happenings at their son Steve's wedding was so unusual and funny it could be an SNL skit. - The antics of a grandmother who seemed to have no filter when it came to her off-hand remarks. - You'll learn why this family loves Michigan and especially their beloved hometown, Detroit.

From its designation in 1926 to the rise of the interstates nearly sixty years later, Route 66 was, in John Steinbeck’s words, America’s Mother Road, carrying countless travelers the 2,400 miles between Chicago and Los Angeles. Whoever they were—adventurous motorists or Dustbowl migrants, troops on military transports or passengers on buses, vacationing families or a new breed of tourists—these travelers had to eat. The story of where they stopped and what they found, and of how these roadside offerings changed over time, reveals twentieth-century America on the move, transforming the nation’s cuisine, culture, and landscape along the way. Author T. Lindsay Baker, a glutton for authenticity, drove the historic route—or at least the 85 percent that remains intact—in a four-cylinder 1930 Ford station wagon. Sparing us the dust and bumps, he takes us for a spin along Route 66, stopping to sample the fare at diners, supper clubs, and roadside stands and to describe how such venues came and went—even offering kitchen-tested recipes from historic eateries en route. Start-ups that became such American fast-food icons as McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, Steak ’n Shake, and Taco Bell feature alongside mom-and-pop diners with flocks of chickens out back and sit-down restaurants with heirloom menus. Food-and-drink establishments from speakeasies to drive-ins share the right-of-way with other attractions, accommodations, and challenges, from the Whoopee Auto Coaster in Lyons, Illinois, to the piles of “chat” (mining waste) in the Tri-State District of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma, to the perils of driving old automobiles over the Jericho Gap in the Texas Panhandle or Sitgreaves Pass in western Arizona. Describing options for the wealthy and the not-so-well-heeled, from hotel dining rooms to ice cream stands, Baker also notes the particular travails African Americans faced at every turn, traveling Route 66 across the decades of segregation, legal and illegal. So grab your hat and your wallet (you’ll probably need cash) and come along for an enlightening trip down America’s memory lane—a westward tour through the nation’s heartland and history, with all the trimmings, via Route 66.