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One for the Road: Revised Edition by: Tony Horwitz List Price: CDN$ 18.00 City Travel Guides Price: CDN$ 13.14 You Save: CDN$4.86 (27%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 910 EAN: 9780375706134 ISBN: 0375706135 Label: Vintage Manufacturer: Vintage Number Of Pages: 224 Publication Date: October 05, 1999 Publisher: Vintage Release Date: October 05, 1999 Studio: Vintage Sales Rank: 256859 Browse for similar items by category:
Editorial Review: From Amazon.com: After a year working an office job in Sydney, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaperman Tony Horwitz finds himself longing for the open road. Spurred on by a colleague's "Aren't you a little too old for this game?" he sets off on a 7,000-mile adventure around Australia, hitchhiking to Alice Springs and beyond: through desolate mining towns, sheep stations, countless bush pubs (do not attempt to match his beer intake), and the forbidding, Martianesque emptinesses of Australian deserts. On the way he encounters hostile, friendly, and downright strange natives; jumps a train; survives a harrowing accident; and uses his relentless sense of humor to face down a cyclone: I prop my pack against the fence as a windbreak. Huddled behind it, I pull on two pairs of pants, three shirts, four pairs of socks--my entire wardrobe in fact, except for the dung-covered shirt and five pairs of elastic-waisted underwear. No room for dignity here, at the center of a cyclone. I put the jockey shorts over my head, one pair at a time, fitting the fly over my nose to let a little oxygen in.A wily melange of tenderness, eye-popping lunacy, and occasional white-knuckled fear, One for the Road will leave you yearning to have the never-ending-blue Oz sky above, the flavor of that red, red dust in your mouth, and a tinnie to wash it all down with. --Jhana Bach Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating: - Funny and lucid travel writingThe author, an American ex-pat living and working as a newspaper reporter in Australia, gets the wanderlust and decides to hitch around Australia. He circumnavigates the continent, nearly, and travels deep into the Northern Territory and South Australia. (He wisely avoids the utter emptiness of Western Australia.) He meets a variety of Australians: truckies, anti-environmental loggers and tourists, racists, Aborigines in beat-up "utes" (utility vehicles, like pickup trucks), and professional wanderers. He hunkers down in a ditch during a cyclone, wonders at the oddities of Australian cartography ("rivers" and "lakes" are plentiful in name, but dry as dust in reality), and watches as his chauffeurs down dozens ... Read More: Rating: - Equal in quality yet different than BrysonThis book makes an excellent companion to Bill Bryson's 'In a Sunburned Country.' As Horowitz spent much of his time hitchhiking through Australia (as opposed to Bryson's quick train and driving strategy), he met many more strange characters than Bryson, and his descriptions of the locals are spot-on and often laugh-out-loud funny. His road trip with four aboriginals in a dilapidated pickup truck is of special note. My only criticism of the book is that I am not a particular fan of present tense travel writing ('I dash up the hill, the horde of angry kangaroos hopping in thundering unison behind me' -- not a real quote), in which this book is written. It's a minor gripe, however; Horowitz is a former correspondent of the Wall Street ... Read More: Rating:  - Seen better on the subjectI agree with some of the other reviewers regarding Horwitz's other works. He has certainly served up much better fare with his other works. The story is very formulaic and lacks the cooky characters you'd think you might encounter on a journey like this. Don't get me wrong, there are a few odd and interesting people we meet here and there, but much of the book feels rushed. Get picked up, drive X amount of miles, get dropped off, wait in the sun, till get picked up and repeat cycle. There are some classic Horwitz one liners and oberservations but I'm not sure it warrants reading this book. He has a car accident in the middle of his journey, ironically as he's driving himself not hitchhiking, and I wonder if this affected ... Read More: Rating: - Young HorwitzHaving greatly enjoyed "Confederates in the Attic" and "Blue Latitudes," as well as "Baghdad Without A Map", I am a Horwitz fan. This book, "One For The Road" was his first book, written as a 27 year old and about his hitchhiking journey across Australia. The book is thin and narrowly focused in comparison with Horwitz's later work, particularly "Confederates" and "Blue". While these books combine the road trip with the local history and background of related topics, "One for the Road" is all about the trip. The basics of the book can be summed up as follows: wait in the hot sun for a ride, get picked up by an Aussie (transplant or Aborigine), drive with the Aussie as they consume tinnies of beer as fast as they can pour it ... Read More: Rating:  - Find out what Australia is aboutThe best kind of book - a non-fiction page turner. Horwitz writes about his slow grinding hitchhiking tour through the expanse and heat of the Australian outback. He does so with constant wit and determined irreverance. It is just plain fun to be along for the ride. But I don't think his only purpose is entertain us. I think he also wants to show us the character of the Australian people. He succeeds. We discover a tough, independent, hard drinking, hard fighting, and hard laughing people. He tells his stories so well that we are left changed. We are left with a fresh new look at the what Australia is about. Read this book. You'll look forward to every new page and when you are done, you are left a little changed. What ... Read More: |
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