On the Road with Charles Kuralt by Charles Kuralt

by Charles Kuralt

Interviews around the country with ordinary Americans

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Journalism, Essays, Americana

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Charles Kuralt was an award-winning American journalist. He was most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and later as the first anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning, a position he held for fifteen years.

Kuralt's "On the Road" segments were recognized twice with personal Peabody Awards. The first, awarded in 1968, cited those segments as heartwarming and "nostalgic vignettes"; in 1975, the award was for his work as a U.S. "bicentennial historian"; his work "capture[d] the individuality of the people, the dynamic growth inherent in the area, and ...the rich heritage of this great nation." He shared in a third Peabody awarded to CBS News Sunday Morning.

Reviews

[Jessaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is moe than just a travel book because the purpose of the author's travel ws to meet interesting people and talk about them. I have always wished that there would be a TV program that did this, and he had his own TV show years ago, but I don't recall it. We could use one now in our times of turmoil.

He met interesting people like a doctor that only charged $3 per office visit and often took food in exchange. Then one I really liked was a man who, in his childhood, never had a bicycle, so he now repaired throwaway bicycles and loaned them out to kids for free. The list goes on and on.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always loved the brief snippets by Charles Kuralt on the Sunday show. Sometimes we would be late to church waiting for his piece to run but didn't get yelled at because my Dad was waiting for the piece to air too; they were that good.

I read this book on my honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas. I vividly remember reading it while lounging in the shallow end of a beautiful pool with a disappearing edge that dropped right into ocean; pure paradise.

The stories in this book were so sweet and beautifully written. Many made me want to pack up and head home to the America and the Americans he describes.

Quick easy read that I am sure you would enjoy.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a comforting and happy book- the idea of hopping in your car, driving down back roads and through small towns, and discovering wonderful characters and magical places. Boy, am I in the mood for a road trip!

[Bronwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

his life on the road, and the people and things he saw during his career

[Dbeasley · Rating 5 out of 5]

My family ("Thanksgiving") is featured in this book, so it will always be one of my favorites!

[Jerry Rehkemper · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a very short book, which I enjoyed and brought back memories from when I listened to him in the 80's and 90's.

[Ellen Behrens · Rating 5 out of 5]

As full-time RVers with fourteen years under the wheels, my husand and I have covered a good bit of the country. We haven't put anywhere near the number of miles oher RVers have, but we've certainly seen our share of places and met many fascinating people (we've also met some pretty awful folks, but let's keep this review in the positive territory).

If I were a bit more outgoing, perhaps we could have collected a few tales as fascinating as those Charles Kuralt has collected in this distillment of his many years On the Road for CBS, exploring the byways of this country and introducing the rest of America to the wonderful people he met, showing us the what we wouldn't otherwise see in our own living rooms forty years ago or more.

Reading his profiles and travelogues, I couldn't help wondering whatever happened to these people (like Alan Silverstone, "The Gumball King") or how much some places might have changed (is the lonely tree along US 50 near Delta, Colorado, still being decorated for Christmas?). And where are our little-recognized heroes today? Not the folks who garner all kinds of attention on social media for their causes (not a bad thing, don't get me wrong), but people like Jethro Mann from Belmont, North Carolina, who used to fix bicycles and give them away to local kids who couldn't afford to buy one; or Agatha Burgess of Buffalo, South Carolina, who got up at five every morning and started cooking so she could feed anyone who came by who needed a meal. Not to a soup kitchen, mind you, but her own home.
Who would do that today?!?

So Kuralt's book is a reminder of when people could literally open their homes to strangers, who gave freely of their time and talents to benefit others. I loved every bit of this book, and it made me miss his casual way with people, his ability to create trust so strangers would open up to him and share their stories.

The world could use a Charles Kuralt today. A reporter whose stories were about the subjects he was interviewing, the places he was visiting--and not about him. Because, though he didn't intend it, plenty of Charles Kuralt comes through anyway, and we are all the better for it.

[Lkelly6 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Life on the Road
by Charles Kuralt

10 September 1934 - 04 July 1997
Wilmington, NC - New York City, NY

Take this charming book with you on your next trip. The airplane miles or the long airport layover will fly like minutes instead of dragging by hours. Read the list of chapters in the Contents. You can read them out of order if you like because Kuralt doesn't organize chronologically after introducing his life beginnings.
Kuralt explains how he got into print journalism, then radio, then into early-days television reporting. His gentle personality and broad curiosity never quite jelled with the action-calamity-muckraking style of modern News Reporting. To travel the USA, finding good-news stories to report was his own idea, and he managed to persuade CBS News President Dick Salant to finance him and cameraman Jim Wilson on a 3-month trip around the USA to see what they could see and portray for the news.
What a grand time Charlie and his various crew had for 600+ episodes of amazing Americana television, so good that every episode has been preserved carefully and is still used.
What I really like about On The Road, the book as well as the television shows, is how uncontrived are the stories. When present-day groups present similar stories, it seems they all have been over-laid with Reality TV - that pervasive photogenic Kardashian style.
This is a terrific slow Read.

[Dan Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this book was copyrighted in 1985, it was a thrill to hear the stories about people who continue to make this country the greatest. I got to read about a man who made handmade bricks for over 50 years, a story about a pharmacy where, after a person has consumed 100 cups of coffee, they paint your name on a cup and put it on a shelf for only that person to use as long as he is alive. There is the story of a family from Mississippi, who started out as workers on a farm, but who taught their 7 children to work hard-All seven were college graduates with advanced degrees. And then there is a story of a lost dog who sat by the side of the road waiting on his previous owner to come back and get him until one day he was hit by a car. The community had taken care of him for months.. and in his death, erected a headstone where he is buried.

Charles Kuralt has entertained and informed us about ourselves on television for years. Taking to the highways, he has met the little-known and the famous, and shared them with the rest of us. This heartwarming book reminds us again of some of the extraordinary people he has met over the years in words and photographs, and provides the exact words of the interviews, so that we can permanently enjoy his visits with people we have come to know and care for, again and again.

[Rini Cobbey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read through my 2017 eyes, the vignette collection is occasionally sweet, rarely--though not never--provocative, and always repetitive. Besides a few gestures at poverty, which is never confronted, just overcome through good will--none of the stories incorporates conflict. It's a picture of the people on the back roads of the US that is too comfortable in nostalgia and its yearning for authortative, meaningful, cohesive, harmonious pastness: The Past and The Old Ways which must be glorified because goshdarnit they're the good ol' guys. The book works as it's designed, in spurts of short and vivid anecdotes. But if I weren't reading it to get some genre context for a comparable current project I'm editing, I'd have had no drive to keep reading to the end.

[Glenn Cassel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book while deployed aboard USS Ranger to the Indian Ocean in 1980-1981. The one chapter is close to me and that is the one about The Saddest Place I Know. I have a distant relative who was killed in action at the Little Bighorn, Pvt. Richard Dorn is on the marker. I am a native of Montana originally from the Hi Line but have lived in the Yellowstone Country in both Forsyth and Billings.

[Robert A · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess I could give it a 5 star but while reading it I just kept thinking of the double life that Kuralt was living. I always liked his stories when he was on T.V. but after he died the world found out he had a squeeze on the side for 30 years. Basically another life and wife. But this has nothing to do with the stories themselves just my own problem.

[Van Reese · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember growing up occasionally listening to On the Road with Charles Kuralt on the evening news, so I was glad to get a copy of this book and read some of the stories. The stories are dated, but are still quite interesting. This is the kind of book that you can sit back in your living room and read about extraordinary people and discover new places.

[F · Rating 4 out of 5]

without meaning to do it Kuralt sums up the mindset difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants in Chapter 9, Seasons, the section on July 4th. That alone was worth the price of the book- or, getting it from a library and reading it.

[Rick Fifield · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice compendium of Kuralt's years on the road remember various subjects. What is amazing is that this book was written in 1985 and Kuralt had another 12 years of stories left to go. A wonderful selection of stories.

[Ann Tell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed many times, I cried a few times, I remembered many times. I totally love this book. I wondered several times where those people are now (40! Years after the book was written). They are alive again in the reader’s mind. Permanent.

[Alex Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There are probably no lessons in any of this but I know that in the future whenever I hear that the family is a dying institution, I’ll think of them. Whenever I hear anything in America is impossible, I’ll think of them.”

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

He’s an American gem, some nice background on how Charles Kuralt gained the ability to take these assignments. Several bits from his travels across the country. You just gotta love it.

[Dano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top 10 books I’ve read in the past year. Loved it.

[Bruce Ginn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the author’s telling of interesting people in small towns scattered across America who are giving, kind, have dealt with so much, and have made a positive difference for others.

[David Horn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book collects a number of Kuralt's pieces that he prepared for CBS news as he drove around the US looking for interesting stories to tell the news viewing public. One thing Kurlat can do well is tell a story. In the space of two minutes (TV time) he could really paint a picture and this book is full of interesting people and pictures of an America that no longer exists.

My favorite story is about Bill Bodisch, a 68 year old Iowa farmer, who never keen about farming always wanted to sail around the world. Bill Bodisch built a 68 foot boat from scratch (using materials he had available to him) in his barnyard, and he and his wife auctioned off the farm and all their property and began their journey around the world.

[Carol Merrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book because of the "feel good" factor. Charles Kuralt traveled around and talked to ordinary people who are always extraordinary in some way, like we all are. This is a collection of stories about some of the people and things that he has encountered. One of my favorite parts, that I always remember, is when a man walks out his front door and is upset that he walked through a spiderweb and got it all over himself. Then it is pointed out, how about the spider who took all day to create that web. I like looking at things in this way when I think things are going badly for me. There is always a bigger picture.

[B.C. Kowalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a great slice of an Americana I think that's gotten lost. Charles Kuralt had a knack for teasing out those great feature stories. Sure, he's cherry picking the good parts, but it's nice reading these stories of people self-sacrificing, or just quirky. The photography in the book is horrendous, and you'll often think you wish you could get a good look at the people he's talking to. And sometimes the fact that these are transcripts of TV segments mean it can occasionally be missed an important visual cue. Despite that, On the Road is a tremendous read and should be required of any aspiring feature writer.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

A re-cap of Charles Kuralt's TV vignettes. I always loved his "On the Road" stories on CBS. I could hear Charles talking as I read this book.

[AnnePM · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a light read, very pleasant. Kuralt is a nice person to spend a few hours with. Not to be read with serious literature in mind, but rather a relaxing visit with a warm, thoughtful companion who shares his adventures.

[Ann · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I like listening to Kuralt's vignettes, this was a little different. It did not read as essay rather was just a written transcript of some of his interviews. But I love reading about the places he's been and things he's seen.

[George King · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for all Americans and should be required reading in schools. It demonstrates how Americans used to behave towards one another. It is a good antidote against Maga Republicans.

[Patrick Shryock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another great traveling book.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet snippets of stories from his show. Charles Kuralt was a sweet man.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice little read. A look back on the way things used be done in TV News. Some good points on writing and perceiving..but NOT ENOUGH on the why's and how's of things. A wistful read.