Seeing this panoply of signs splashed across the pages in Route 66 Roadside Signs and Advertisements is almost as good as taking a road trip! You can get your kicks--and pretty much anything else--on Route 66, provided you see the sign that s advertising it! Route 66 Roadside Signs and Advertisements showcases the colorful history of commercial signage along the Mother Road. From kitschy to classy, this book includes photos of early vintage signs as well as modern signs. The vivid photos are organized according to type of establishment the signs are for, such as roadside attractions, motels, restaurants, businesses of ill repute (bars, strip clubs, etc.), and more. While Route 66 Roadside Signs and Advertisements places emphasis on high-quality visuals, it also includes anecdotes and history about the signs that sprang up along the sides of Route 66. The most famous Route 66 signs get center-stage treatment in the book, with two-page spreads accompanied by detailed text. Such signs include icons like the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, New Mexico, the Munger Moss in Lebanon, Missouri, the U-Drop Inn at Shamrock, Texas, and the El Vado in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Additional information is included, such as background about buzzing neon lights--how these signs are actually made and how they get restored. Each image from this famous American roadway could be a postcard, so allow yourself to be rubbernecked by Route 66 Signs and Advertisements.

This piece of Americana is packed with vibrant signs straight from Route 66, the road known for its in-your-face advertising for wild attractions.

The roadside sign is an American icon: a glowing evocation of the golden age of the open road. Yet signs, more than nostalgic symbols, are complex pieces of design that reflect signmakers' ambitions and intentions, reveal cultural and economic trends, and stand as evidence of vernacular traditions. American Signs combines text and image to analyze the motel signs of Route 66 -- their concept and influences, typestyle and color choice, form and composition, context and placement. With its insightful writing, clear graphic diagrams, and hundreds of contemporary and historic images, American Signs is a singular reading experience and a groundbreaking study. Book jacket.

It started in the heartland and originally ended in Los Angeles (not, contrary to myth, at the ocean). It carried truckers crossing the country, Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl, vacationers seeking the sun. It was Americas Main Street, the Mother Road, the Will Rogers Highway, and, at its dangerous curves, Bloody 66. Get your kicks on Route 66 with this wonderfully illustrated tribute to the best-loved highway in this car-loving nation. Michael Witzel shares his expertise and wealth of personal, archive, collector, and contributing photographer images in these pages, offering a nostalgic tour of the charms and oddities of this road through American cultural history. Starting in Chicago and running to Santa Monica, this book highlights the sights along the highway with historic and current photos in then-and-now pairings, and includes Route 66 postcards, road signs, trinkets, maps, brochures, and advertisements. Here we see Route 66 as it was in its heyday and as it is now, the neon glamour of yesterday versus the ghost towns of today. Witzel and his wife, Gyvel Young-Witzel, recount the highways history, its role in popular culture, and its demise, as well as the individual stories of famous sights. Several profiles of those with close ties to the Mother Road, including the woman who played Ruthie Joad in the The Grapes of Wrath film, are included.

Fully revised and expanded New stories-more details -Nearly 30 feet of strip maps -350 towns and attractions -More highway memorabilia -Mini-tours-rentals-discounts -Chicago-L.A. mileage table

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.

All the Facts presents a history of the role of information in the United States since 1870, when the nation began a nearly 150-year period of economic prosperity and technological and scientific transformations. James Cortada argues that citizens and their institutions used information extensively as tools to augment their work and private lives and that they used facts to help shape how the nation evolved during these fourteen decades. He argues that information's role has long been a critical component of the work, play, culture, and values of this nation, and no more so than during the twentieth century when its function in society expanded dramatically. While elements of this story have been examined by thousands of scholars---such as the role of radio, newspapers, books, computers, and the Internet, about such institutions as education, big business, expanded roles of governments from town administration to the state house, from agriculture to the services and information industries---All the Facts looks at all of these elements holistically, providing a deeper insight into the way the United States evolved over time. An introduction and 11 chapters describe what this information ecosystem looked like, how it evolved, and how it was used. For another vast layer of information about this subject the reader is directed to the detailed bibliographic essay in the back of this book. It includes a narrative history, case studies in the form of sidebars, and stories illustrating key points. Readers will find, for example, the story of how the US postal system helped create today's information society, along with everything from books and newspapers to TV, computers, and the Internet. The build-up to what many today call the Information Age took a long time to achieve and continues to build momentum. The implications for the world, and not just for the United States, are as profound as any mega-trend one could identify in the history of humankind. All the Facts presents this development thoroughly in an easy-to-digest format that any lover of history, technology, or the history of information and business will enjoy.

Considers the following highway beautification bills. S. 2084, to regulate outdoor advertising and roadside junkyards and to provide funding for scenic enhancement along Federal-aid highways. S. 2259, to regulate outdoor advertising. S. 1974, to establish protection of fish, wildlife, and recreation resources as a priority in Federal highway planning. Also considers proposed amendment to S. 2084 to add a Title V, the Junked Automobile Disposal Act of 1965.

The West is one of the strongest and most enduring place images in the world and its myth is firmly rooted in popular culture – whether novels, film, television, music, clothing and even video games. The West combines myth and history, rugged natural scenery and wide open spaces, popular culture and promises of transformation. These imagined places draw in tourists, attracted by a cultural heritage that is part fictional and mediatised. In turn, tourism operators and destination marketing organisations refashion what they present to fit these imagined images. This book explores this imagining of a mythic West through three key themes, travel, film and frontiers to offer new insight into how the imagination of the West and popular culture has influenced the construction of tourism. In doing so, it examines the series of paradoxes that underlie the basic appeal of the West: evocative frontier, a boundary zone between civilisation and wilderness and between order and lawlessness. It draws on a range of films and literature as well as varying places from festivals to national parks to showcase different aspects of the nexus between travel, film and frontiers in this fascinating region. Interdisciplinary in character, it includes perspectives from cultural studies, American studies, tourism and film studies. Written by leading academics, this title will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics in the fields of cultural studies, tourism, film studies and media studies and all those interested in film tourism.