Here, There, Elsewhere

Starred review from November 12, 2012
Acclaimed travel writer Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways) wanders off in every direction in this scintillating collection of short writings. Culled from 30 years of magazine articles, these pieces roam across terrain both familiar and exotic. Many find magic in mundane patches of America, from improbably delicious fried-fish stands on Minnesota’s Lake Superior shore to oddly idyllic Gulf Coast industrial canals and Seattle’s rebel micro-breweries. Others survey stranger climes: tiny Japanese garden farms crowded with bawdy roadside gods; Mayan villages in the Yucatan, their ancient fertility dances and traditional sorcery barely varnished by Catholicism. Several take in Britain’s crazy traffic, obnoxious ghosts, dotty antiquarians, and intimidating cuisine (a black pudding nearly does the author in). And some revisit scenes from Least Heat-Moon’s disheveled Native American background, including a riotous Thanksgiving feud between a full(er)-blooded uncle and heathen-disdaining aunt. A master at conjuring place, Least Heat-Moon intertwines primeval geology with modern social mores, gorgeous scenery with tourist tackery, vast landscapes with intricate psychologies. (One piece follows a letter-bomber’s demented quest to paint a colossal smiley-face of explosions across the Great Plains.) There is a dazzling variety of places, people and curiosities, linked by a highway of funny, perceptive, generous prose.

Starred review from January 1, 2013

Least Heat-Moon's (Blue Highways: A Journey into America) latest book is a compilation of travel essays and articles, spanning the period 1983-2011, that is much more than simple reprints; these are the original pieces that the author submitted to his editors. With each piece is a summary putting the earlier writing into context (or providing an update). He writes of traveling the islands off the Scottish "mainland," taking the Delta Queen down the Mississippi River, exploring potato fields and vineyards on Long Island, satisfying his quest for memorable smoked fish from Lake Superior, and retracing Faulkner's steps in rural Mississippi, among other experiences. VERDICT Least Heat-Moon is truly one of this nation's best travel writers, if not the best. He takes travel writing seriously as a literary genre. An essential title; highly recommended.--Lee Arnold, Historical Soc. of Pennsylvania

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2012
It's collected-works time for the renowned author of such outstanding travel literature as Blue Highways (1983) and River-Horse (1999). Thirty magazine pieces comprise this assembly, with some articles ranging abroad, such as the author's depictions of his ventures to New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, and Britain. Most, however, amble around America or radiate from the author's home states of Missouri and Kansas. Several articles further extol what watchfulness can reveal about the Sunflower State, or about anywhere else one goes. An example of attentiveness rewarded is Heat-Moon's evocation of history's layers between his home and the mile distant to the Missouri River: a farm returning to forest, mounds and glyphs of vanished woodland Indians, a rails-to-trails dispute, and Lewis and Clark. Similarly, a sedulous search for Lake Superior's piscine bounty, remembered from childhood highway trips as his father's navigator, takes Heat-Moon through the geology and fish shacks of northeastern Minnesota. Alaska, Oregon, the Mississippi River, and Long Island additionally frame the author's peregrinations and kaleidoscopic visualization of a place's landscape, people, and past. Expect a clamor for this compendium from Heat-Moon's legion of readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)