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The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
In The Longest Road, one of America's most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large.Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he'd drive from the nation's southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to everyday Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.So it was that in 2011, in an America more divided than in living memory, Caputo, his wife, and their two English setters made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as "Fred" and "Ethel") from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 16,000 miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today's United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could cause us to pull apart.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 25, 2013
170 people are currently reading
1804 people want to read
About the author
Philip Caputo
31 books319 followersAmerican author and journalist. Author of 18 books, including the upcoming MEMORY AND DESIRE (Sept. 2023). Best known for
A Rumor of War,
a best-selling memoir of his experiences during the Vietnam War. Website: PhilipCaputo.com
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July 24, 2013
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
I could not read Philip Caputo’s new book The Longest Road: Overland from Key West to the Arctic Ocean without reflecting on his extraordinary life. The man has had a hell of a wild ride all over the world, sometimes in extreme danger. Few have lived such a life and few can write as well as he does. His great Vietnam War memoir, A Rumor of War, is considered a classic. He led men in combat in the treacherous jungles of Vietnam. He fought beside them and watched them bleed and die. And then he wrote a great book about it. He became a combat correspondent and covered the insanity of Lebanon’s civil war. He was captured and held prisoner by Palestinian fedayeen in war torn Beirut. He was also shot in Beirut. He crossed into Eritrea on camelback with other reporters and he covered the Yom Kippur War between the Arabs and Israelis. He trekked into wild and primitive Afghanistan to cover the Mujahedeen fighting the Russians. He was there for the fall of Saigon. Philip Caputo is familiar with war and the darkness in men’s souls. He has also traveled the desolate, unforgiving wild places in this world, and always, he writes with eloquence, brilliance and a deep understanding of the human condition.
Time passes, as it does for all of us, and now after the death of his father and turning 70, he has taken us on a long and fascinating road trip across America in his latest book, The Longest Road. It is time to see America. This 5,500 mile journey begins in the sub-tropical southernmost part of America in infamous, colorful, bawdy Key West, Florida which is only 90 miles across the Florida Straits from Cuba. Mr. Caputo knows it well and although it has changed over the decades, it still retains a glimmer of that old end-of-the-line, anything-goes, funky, bohemian, tropical island. He and his wife Leslie met some of Key West’s interesting characters at the start of their long road trip and he asked them the question he would ask many others along the way. What is it that binds us together as Americans? What unites Cuban kids reciting The Pledge of Allegiance in their Key West classroom with Inupiat kids reciting it near the Arctic Ocean in Alaska? A new citizen, a man from Cuba, snapped their picture at the Southernmost Point and told Mr. Caputo and his wife that he had traveled the world but he wanted to live here in the US because of our freedom and even though there is an economic crisis, he still believes the US is the best country in the world.
Caputo once went by camel caravan into the wilderness of the Sinai desert with bedouin tribesmen that wore daggers in their belts. One of them made sure Caputo understood that He, Muhammed, was the Sheikh el Kara, the Sheikh of the Caravan. (From Means of Escape) He, Caputo, was the Sheikh el Kara of this almost 6,000 mile caravan from Key West to Deadhorse, Alaska. And the Sheikh el Kara would settle for nothing less than a shiny, rounded, silver Globetrotter Airstream which has an almost cult like status among the cognoscenti of recreational vehicles. The Sheikh knows his camels! He named the Airstream Ethel and she was hauled behind his truck named Fred. He and Leslie also brought along their two lovable, playful English setter dogs named Sage and Sky. I really got a kick out of those dogs and enjoyed all their antics.
His one rule was to avoid the interstate highways in order to see and experience the real America. His descriptions of the people they met and the gorgeous, breathtaking scenery of America made me want to immediately start planning my own road trip across America. He calls The Natchez Trace “the most enchanting road in America” and says “there’s amazing food in the most out-of-the-way places.” He talked to people that had lost everything in the collapse of the housing market that went to live in the woods but kept their generous spirits. He and Leslie helped volunteers that had come from all over the country to help rebuild and clean up Tuscaloosa, Alabama after the tornado. Blacks and whites worked together and displayed a deep generosity towards others. They met people that had little but still believed it was hope and optimism and belief in a better tomorrow that holds us together. They listened to the regional dialects and ate the regional food. They visited The Farm which started as an old hippie commune decades ago in the forests and highlands of Tennessee. Farmers along the way lamented that we aren’t rooted in the soil anymore. Leslie fell in love with the green, lush beauty of the Ozarks. Soon “The Midwestern Woodlands and Savannahs surrendered grudgingly to the Central Great Plains,” and the boarded up shrinking small towns where Big Agriculture had bought out the small family farms and the noon day siren still sounded. In Kansas they enjoyed a small town rodeo and Caputo put on his cowboy hat. They stopped at the writer Willa Cather’s hometown in Red Cloud, Nebraska and recalled her wise words that “men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.” In Grand Island, Nebraska there are Mexicans, Sudanese and Somalis working in the meat packing plant. What a combination. Only in America! Their children, no doubt, recite The Pledge of Allegiance in school each morning also. However, “The unintended consequence was to turn the city of some forty-eight thousand into a melting pot where little was melting and much was on high simmer.” There were problems between the Mexican workers and the Somalis at the plant and some of the locals didn’t like all the changes to their town but knew that Americans wouldn’t accept those jobs anymore. One old man “believed that Americans had become too soft, leaving immigrants to take on the tough, dirty jobs.” Mr. Caputo remembered growing up in multi-ethnic Chicago and he recalled talking to Mike Royko, “the great Chicago Daily News columnist” who told him about the time he took his kids to California and they reported back the disturbing news. “Dad, they aren’t anything.” “What do you mean they aren’t anything?” Royko asked them. “We asked them what nationality they were, and they said they were American!”
Mr. Caputo tried to follow the historic trail of Lewis and Clark across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains and then down to the Washington coast. In the Great Plains states they started to notice all the Indian names and they looked for the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. They visited poverty stricken Indian reservations where the people suffer high rates of alcoholism and suicide. He felt connected to the history of America as they followed the Lincoln road up the Platt River valley with it’s “plentiful water and lush grass.” The early pioneers traveled this route in their wagon trains headed west. This road was originally the Great Medicine Road for the Indians, “a web of paths beaten along the riversides by migrating buffalo and the plains tribes that tracked them.” Mr. Caputo explains how the old trail begat the Platt River Trace which begat the Oregon and Mormon Trails that begat the Pony Express and then the Union Pacific, the first transcontinental railway, and this of course, begat the Lincoln road of today.
Wild buffalo roam the Badlands National Park and Bighorn sheep can be seen jumping from ledge to ledge in the mountains. There is weird, spectacular scenery with “buttes that resembled Mayan temples” and “gigantic rock mushrooms,” and the wind and isolated beauty in the eerie quiet and stillness of the wilderness. They ran into Ansel Woodenknife at their campground. He made his famous Indian fry bread tacos at his cafe that was once featured on the Food Network. Alas, he got too busy and had to close down, a “victim of his own success.” He is also a Lakota shaman and “a teacher of the way” to his tribe that said, “You want to talk about the fabric of this country, that’s it.” “So rather than a melting pot, it would be a...” “A blanket of color, all sewn in the shape of the U.S.”
He soon added the beautiful Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway to his list of favorite roads. “Granite cliffs shot up a hundred feet or more, pine and spruce clutching the crags above.” Gold was discovered there in the Black Hills back in the 1800’s and the Sioux Nation of Indians still want their land back. They went hiking. “The dogs were in their glory. Dashing unfettered through rough country is in a setter’s blood. Sage seemed to recapture some of her youth, sprinting off into the woods not to be seen for five or ten minutes, and when she returned to check in, she would look back at us and--we swear--smile.” North Dakota is in the middle of an oil boom and before they moved on to the Custer Battlefield, he and Leslie had a little fight over...you guessed it....which direction to go! Sound familiar? Near a campsite on the Yellowstone, in Paradise Valley, he felt he was almost coming home. It was in a rented cabin near there thirty six years ago, on a tributary called Pine Creek, that Mr. Caputo finished his first book, A Rumor of War. On Fourth of July weekend they stayed at a dude ranch. They still had 4,000 miles to go. Two young women that worked on the ranch had their own perspective. “We don’t blend in very well with our generation...they get so far away from, you know, what built them...there’s a disconnect, it’s more about things than about places and people. It’s Ooo, I lost my iPod, my life is over.” They went on to say...that “the country definitely is in disarray. At the same time, to grow as a country, we need to have conflict, and conflict is healthy, conflict is good. But the media has this awesome way of blowing it out of proportion. It would be nice not to have this skewed perspective on the television. Yes, there are extremely left wing and extremely right wing, but the middle ground very rarely gets reported on. And you know, there is a huge disconnect between urban life and rural life. There’s nooo sense of community in that respect.” Leslie observed that they had hardly run into any angry people on this trip.
I thought of my Dad as I read these chapters. I used to watch his beloved cowboy movies with him when I was a kid and Mr. Caputo’s lyrical descriptions of the majestic scenery, wild weather and animals, and the dramatic history of the frontier days of America’s West actually brought me to tears more than once. My Dad would have loved this book.
The weather turned chilly when they got up into Montana. They crossed the Continental Divide and drove on to Washington where they saw wind farms and developed a “newfound toleration of them.” Seagulls soon appeared and they knew the Pacific coast was near. They drank coffee up the beautiful, misty coast of Washington and took the ferry to the San Juans in a deep fog and saw old growth forests where fir trees, western hemlock and red cedar “rose higher than radio towers.” One cedar had a circumference greater than twenty feet and was just a sapling when Columbus sailed. In relaxed Anacortes there were demonstrations. On one side of the intersection were silver haired people carrying signs that said “Thank You US Military and Let Freedom Ring.” On the other corner others carried signs that said “Unite for Peace and War is Not The Answer.” “Well, we finally found them,” Leslie said as we drove on. “Angry Americans. And right here in little Anacortes. Who would have thought?”
They crossed the border into Canada and after a two-and-a-half day drive from the border they reached Dawson Creek and the start of the famous ALCAN, The Alaska-Canada Highway. They had passed through the Fraser River Canyon, “a region that called for a thesaurus of breathless adjectives. Stupendous. Spectacular. Magnificent. Majestic. Awesome..Mountains like half a dozen Gibraltars stacked one on top of the other, ribboned with rock veins,rose almost sheer on both sides of the canyon, through which the swollen Fraser surged with incalculable power.” The Alaska Highway is considered to be a great adventure to many travelers. It is remote and can be dangerous. Black bears ambled along the roadside. Moose and Stone sheep grazed in the distance. There were woods bison, cousins to America’s bison. The huge males weigh more than a ton. When they reached the icy peaks of Mount Logan they knew they had arrived in the legendary Yukon Territory. It was foggy and a cold rain fell. “We were glutted on scenery, dazed by it. Our senses could no longer respond to it.” It was a hell of a long way from Key West! Alaska is immense, half the size of India. Crossing into Alaska, back into the United States, they figured out they had come 7,257 miles with 800 still to go up to Prudhoe Bay, more than half of it on the very rugged Dalton Highway. And “the scenic orgy continued.” It was August and cold. They pressed on. The road is rough and the scenery wonderful. There is fifty or a hundred miles between gas stations. This is it. The real thing. The Alaskan wilderness. They climbed a pass on a rough and slippery road and saw Dall sheep clinging to ledges on the side of the mountain. The temperature was falling and it was snowing. The wind howled. Down the mountain men hunted caribou. The road descended down to the desolation of the coastal plain called the North Slope. The tundra. And there it was, the end of the line. Deadhorse, Alaska, “the strangest and ugliest town in the country.” It was cold and dismal and they went to see the Arctic Ocean. There were geese, snowy owls, caribou, and tundra swans. Two polar bears and a grizzly were in the vicinity. They had made it. From Key West to the Arctic Ocean, no small feat. “But it wasn’t getting there that mattered;” Caputo mused... “it was THE getting there, what Kerouac called the purity of movement,”....and “in the end, though, the journey had been the destination. It had never been anything else.”
Thank you, Mr. Caputo, for this beautiful, riveting journey through America on The Longest Road. It is another one of your wonderful books. Everyone that has some wanderlust in them will surely enjoy this book, but if you can’t hit the road now...relax....mix up a margarita or two...put your feet up...listen to Willie Nelson sing On The Road Again...and start reading The Longest Road, Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean.
I could not read Philip Caputo’s new book The Longest Road: Overland from Key West to the Arctic Ocean without reflecting on his extraordinary life. The man has had a hell of a wild ride all over the world, sometimes in extreme danger. Few have lived such a life and few can write as well as he does. His great Vietnam War memoir, A Rumor of War, is considered a classic. He led men in combat in the treacherous jungles of Vietnam. He fought beside them and watched them bleed and die. And then he wrote a great book about it. He became a combat correspondent and covered the insanity of Lebanon’s civil war. He was captured and held prisoner by Palestinian fedayeen in war torn Beirut. He was also shot in Beirut. He crossed into Eritrea on camelback with other reporters and he covered the Yom Kippur War between the Arabs and Israelis. He trekked into wild and primitive Afghanistan to cover the Mujahedeen fighting the Russians. He was there for the fall of Saigon. Philip Caputo is familiar with war and the darkness in men’s souls. He has also traveled the desolate, unforgiving wild places in this world, and always, he writes with eloquence, brilliance and a deep understanding of the human condition.
Time passes, as it does for all of us, and now after the death of his father and turning 70, he has taken us on a long and fascinating road trip across America in his latest book, The Longest Road. It is time to see America. This 5,500 mile journey begins in the sub-tropical southernmost part of America in infamous, colorful, bawdy Key West, Florida which is only 90 miles across the Florida Straits from Cuba. Mr. Caputo knows it well and although it has changed over the decades, it still retains a glimmer of that old end-of-the-line, anything-goes, funky, bohemian, tropical island. He and his wife Leslie met some of Key West’s interesting characters at the start of their long road trip and he asked them the question he would ask many others along the way. What is it that binds us together as Americans? What unites Cuban kids reciting The Pledge of Allegiance in their Key West classroom with Inupiat kids reciting it near the Arctic Ocean in Alaska? A new citizen, a man from Cuba, snapped their picture at the Southernmost Point and told Mr. Caputo and his wife that he had traveled the world but he wanted to live here in the US because of our freedom and even though there is an economic crisis, he still believes the US is the best country in the world.
Caputo once went by camel caravan into the wilderness of the Sinai desert with bedouin tribesmen that wore daggers in their belts. One of them made sure Caputo understood that He, Muhammed, was the Sheikh el Kara, the Sheikh of the Caravan. (From Means of Escape) He, Caputo, was the Sheikh el Kara of this almost 6,000 mile caravan from Key West to Deadhorse, Alaska. And the Sheikh el Kara would settle for nothing less than a shiny, rounded, silver Globetrotter Airstream which has an almost cult like status among the cognoscenti of recreational vehicles. The Sheikh knows his camels! He named the Airstream Ethel and she was hauled behind his truck named Fred. He and Leslie also brought along their two lovable, playful English setter dogs named Sage and Sky. I really got a kick out of those dogs and enjoyed all their antics.
His one rule was to avoid the interstate highways in order to see and experience the real America. His descriptions of the people they met and the gorgeous, breathtaking scenery of America made me want to immediately start planning my own road trip across America. He calls The Natchez Trace “the most enchanting road in America” and says “there’s amazing food in the most out-of-the-way places.” He talked to people that had lost everything in the collapse of the housing market that went to live in the woods but kept their generous spirits. He and Leslie helped volunteers that had come from all over the country to help rebuild and clean up Tuscaloosa, Alabama after the tornado. Blacks and whites worked together and displayed a deep generosity towards others. They met people that had little but still believed it was hope and optimism and belief in a better tomorrow that holds us together. They listened to the regional dialects and ate the regional food. They visited The Farm which started as an old hippie commune decades ago in the forests and highlands of Tennessee. Farmers along the way lamented that we aren’t rooted in the soil anymore. Leslie fell in love with the green, lush beauty of the Ozarks. Soon “The Midwestern Woodlands and Savannahs surrendered grudgingly to the Central Great Plains,” and the boarded up shrinking small towns where Big Agriculture had bought out the small family farms and the noon day siren still sounded. In Kansas they enjoyed a small town rodeo and Caputo put on his cowboy hat. They stopped at the writer Willa Cather’s hometown in Red Cloud, Nebraska and recalled her wise words that “men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.” In Grand Island, Nebraska there are Mexicans, Sudanese and Somalis working in the meat packing plant. What a combination. Only in America! Their children, no doubt, recite The Pledge of Allegiance in school each morning also. However, “The unintended consequence was to turn the city of some forty-eight thousand into a melting pot where little was melting and much was on high simmer.” There were problems between the Mexican workers and the Somalis at the plant and some of the locals didn’t like all the changes to their town but knew that Americans wouldn’t accept those jobs anymore. One old man “believed that Americans had become too soft, leaving immigrants to take on the tough, dirty jobs.” Mr. Caputo remembered growing up in multi-ethnic Chicago and he recalled talking to Mike Royko, “the great Chicago Daily News columnist” who told him about the time he took his kids to California and they reported back the disturbing news. “Dad, they aren’t anything.” “What do you mean they aren’t anything?” Royko asked them. “We asked them what nationality they were, and they said they were American!”
Mr. Caputo tried to follow the historic trail of Lewis and Clark across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains and then down to the Washington coast. In the Great Plains states they started to notice all the Indian names and they looked for the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. They visited poverty stricken Indian reservations where the people suffer high rates of alcoholism and suicide. He felt connected to the history of America as they followed the Lincoln road up the Platt River valley with it’s “plentiful water and lush grass.” The early pioneers traveled this route in their wagon trains headed west. This road was originally the Great Medicine Road for the Indians, “a web of paths beaten along the riversides by migrating buffalo and the plains tribes that tracked them.” Mr. Caputo explains how the old trail begat the Platt River Trace which begat the Oregon and Mormon Trails that begat the Pony Express and then the Union Pacific, the first transcontinental railway, and this of course, begat the Lincoln road of today.
Wild buffalo roam the Badlands National Park and Bighorn sheep can be seen jumping from ledge to ledge in the mountains. There is weird, spectacular scenery with “buttes that resembled Mayan temples” and “gigantic rock mushrooms,” and the wind and isolated beauty in the eerie quiet and stillness of the wilderness. They ran into Ansel Woodenknife at their campground. He made his famous Indian fry bread tacos at his cafe that was once featured on the Food Network. Alas, he got too busy and had to close down, a “victim of his own success.” He is also a Lakota shaman and “a teacher of the way” to his tribe that said, “You want to talk about the fabric of this country, that’s it.” “So rather than a melting pot, it would be a...” “A blanket of color, all sewn in the shape of the U.S.”
He soon added the beautiful Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway to his list of favorite roads. “Granite cliffs shot up a hundred feet or more, pine and spruce clutching the crags above.” Gold was discovered there in the Black Hills back in the 1800’s and the Sioux Nation of Indians still want their land back. They went hiking. “The dogs were in their glory. Dashing unfettered through rough country is in a setter’s blood. Sage seemed to recapture some of her youth, sprinting off into the woods not to be seen for five or ten minutes, and when she returned to check in, she would look back at us and--we swear--smile.” North Dakota is in the middle of an oil boom and before they moved on to the Custer Battlefield, he and Leslie had a little fight over...you guessed it....which direction to go! Sound familiar? Near a campsite on the Yellowstone, in Paradise Valley, he felt he was almost coming home. It was in a rented cabin near there thirty six years ago, on a tributary called Pine Creek, that Mr. Caputo finished his first book, A Rumor of War. On Fourth of July weekend they stayed at a dude ranch. They still had 4,000 miles to go. Two young women that worked on the ranch had their own perspective. “We don’t blend in very well with our generation...they get so far away from, you know, what built them...there’s a disconnect, it’s more about things than about places and people. It’s Ooo, I lost my iPod, my life is over.” They went on to say...that “the country definitely is in disarray. At the same time, to grow as a country, we need to have conflict, and conflict is healthy, conflict is good. But the media has this awesome way of blowing it out of proportion. It would be nice not to have this skewed perspective on the television. Yes, there are extremely left wing and extremely right wing, but the middle ground very rarely gets reported on. And you know, there is a huge disconnect between urban life and rural life. There’s nooo sense of community in that respect.” Leslie observed that they had hardly run into any angry people on this trip.
I thought of my Dad as I read these chapters. I used to watch his beloved cowboy movies with him when I was a kid and Mr. Caputo’s lyrical descriptions of the majestic scenery, wild weather and animals, and the dramatic history of the frontier days of America’s West actually brought me to tears more than once. My Dad would have loved this book.
The weather turned chilly when they got up into Montana. They crossed the Continental Divide and drove on to Washington where they saw wind farms and developed a “newfound toleration of them.” Seagulls soon appeared and they knew the Pacific coast was near. They drank coffee up the beautiful, misty coast of Washington and took the ferry to the San Juans in a deep fog and saw old growth forests where fir trees, western hemlock and red cedar “rose higher than radio towers.” One cedar had a circumference greater than twenty feet and was just a sapling when Columbus sailed. In relaxed Anacortes there were demonstrations. On one side of the intersection were silver haired people carrying signs that said “Thank You US Military and Let Freedom Ring.” On the other corner others carried signs that said “Unite for Peace and War is Not The Answer.” “Well, we finally found them,” Leslie said as we drove on. “Angry Americans. And right here in little Anacortes. Who would have thought?”
They crossed the border into Canada and after a two-and-a-half day drive from the border they reached Dawson Creek and the start of the famous ALCAN, The Alaska-Canada Highway. They had passed through the Fraser River Canyon, “a region that called for a thesaurus of breathless adjectives. Stupendous. Spectacular. Magnificent. Majestic. Awesome..Mountains like half a dozen Gibraltars stacked one on top of the other, ribboned with rock veins,rose almost sheer on both sides of the canyon, through which the swollen Fraser surged with incalculable power.” The Alaska Highway is considered to be a great adventure to many travelers. It is remote and can be dangerous. Black bears ambled along the roadside. Moose and Stone sheep grazed in the distance. There were woods bison, cousins to America’s bison. The huge males weigh more than a ton. When they reached the icy peaks of Mount Logan they knew they had arrived in the legendary Yukon Territory. It was foggy and a cold rain fell. “We were glutted on scenery, dazed by it. Our senses could no longer respond to it.” It was a hell of a long way from Key West! Alaska is immense, half the size of India. Crossing into Alaska, back into the United States, they figured out they had come 7,257 miles with 800 still to go up to Prudhoe Bay, more than half of it on the very rugged Dalton Highway. And “the scenic orgy continued.” It was August and cold. They pressed on. The road is rough and the scenery wonderful. There is fifty or a hundred miles between gas stations. This is it. The real thing. The Alaskan wilderness. They climbed a pass on a rough and slippery road and saw Dall sheep clinging to ledges on the side of the mountain. The temperature was falling and it was snowing. The wind howled. Down the mountain men hunted caribou. The road descended down to the desolation of the coastal plain called the North Slope. The tundra. And there it was, the end of the line. Deadhorse, Alaska, “the strangest and ugliest town in the country.” It was cold and dismal and they went to see the Arctic Ocean. There were geese, snowy owls, caribou, and tundra swans. Two polar bears and a grizzly were in the vicinity. They had made it. From Key West to the Arctic Ocean, no small feat. “But it wasn’t getting there that mattered;” Caputo mused... “it was THE getting there, what Kerouac called the purity of movement,”....and “in the end, though, the journey had been the destination. It had never been anything else.”
Thank you, Mr. Caputo, for this beautiful, riveting journey through America on The Longest Road. It is another one of your wonderful books. Everyone that has some wanderlust in them will surely enjoy this book, but if you can’t hit the road now...relax....mix up a margarita or two...put your feet up...listen to Willie Nelson sing On The Road Again...and start reading The Longest Road, Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean.
January 12, 2014
I read A Rumor of War a long time ago and was very impressed with the author and the way he approached the subject.
I've also crossed the country a couple of times in my Jeep, always staying off the Interstate, camping a lot. Also drove back from Puerto Vallerta to LA with a friend-- Mexico was great and the people were most friendly.
But to the book-- hitting 70, Mr. Caputo wanted to get this road trip out of his system Initially he was going it alone with his dogs, but then his wife signed. Part of me wonders if that was the problem. I just couldn't get into the story. He actually spends a lot of time letting the people he meets "talk". Living in TN several times I wasn't aware of the Free Farm and that was interesting. As a fan of Lewis & Clark I liked that he traveled their path, especially the tavern where one met his end.
Was it me, or did he describe pretty much every woman he met in terms of their attractiveness? Nothing wrong with that, but it started becoming noticeable.
Anyway. A decent enough tale from a really good writer. It also allowed me to talk to my wife about a road trip in my Jeep (I have no worries that she'll want to accompany-- she likes a nice, smooth, quiet ride).
I've also crossed the country a couple of times in my Jeep, always staying off the Interstate, camping a lot. Also drove back from Puerto Vallerta to LA with a friend-- Mexico was great and the people were most friendly.
But to the book-- hitting 70, Mr. Caputo wanted to get this road trip out of his system Initially he was going it alone with his dogs, but then his wife signed. Part of me wonders if that was the problem. I just couldn't get into the story. He actually spends a lot of time letting the people he meets "talk". Living in TN several times I wasn't aware of the Free Farm and that was interesting. As a fan of Lewis & Clark I liked that he traveled their path, especially the tavern where one met his end.
Was it me, or did he describe pretty much every woman he met in terms of their attractiveness? Nothing wrong with that, but it started becoming noticeable.
Anyway. A decent enough tale from a really good writer. It also allowed me to talk to my wife about a road trip in my Jeep (I have no worries that she'll want to accompany-- she likes a nice, smooth, quiet ride).
May 21, 2021
If you have read Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon, you know that this book comes in a distant second. I experienced this book as I do most books these days by listening to the audible version by following along with the e-book.
This is a travel book. The trip of a couple and their two dogs from the southern tip of Florida to the road that goes the furthest north into Alaska to the Arctic Ocean. Oh yes these books always seem to be it is a combination of the scenery and adventures along the way as well as a dive into the varieties of people met along the way. Supposedly the question asked all along the way of various people is what is it that keeps our huge and diverse country together? The optimistic answer is possibly hope and a general can-do attitude. A more pessimistic answer seems to be that it is the struggle between right and left. But this interesting question is basically a very minor part of the book.
I thought this book tended just a little bit toward the corny part of storytelling. There was not really any drama or major revelations. There were a few interesting people along the way. There were a few interesting descriptions of places in the United States that you might find particularly interesting if you have possibly also been there. There were also a few interesting descriptions of other places in the United States that you probably have never been. The personalities of the husband and wife travelers are not significantly filled out to make them very interesting characters.
This is a travel book. The trip of a couple and their two dogs from the southern tip of Florida to the road that goes the furthest north into Alaska to the Arctic Ocean. Oh yes these books always seem to be it is a combination of the scenery and adventures along the way as well as a dive into the varieties of people met along the way. Supposedly the question asked all along the way of various people is what is it that keeps our huge and diverse country together? The optimistic answer is possibly hope and a general can-do attitude. A more pessimistic answer seems to be that it is the struggle between right and left. But this interesting question is basically a very minor part of the book.
I thought this book tended just a little bit toward the corny part of storytelling. There was not really any drama or major revelations. There were a few interesting people along the way. There were a few interesting descriptions of places in the United States that you might find particularly interesting if you have possibly also been there. There were also a few interesting descriptions of other places in the United States that you probably have never been. The personalities of the husband and wife travelers are not significantly filled out to make them very interesting characters.
June 5, 2013
My thanks to LibraryThing and to Henry Holt for my copy.
The author's father once said that there was nothing like being "in a car with everything you need, nothing more, and an open road in front of you." Jack Kerouac wrote "Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is so ever on the road." When Caputo's father, who loved being on the road himself, died, the author realized at age 69 that a lot of his own life was behind him, and he pondered about life ahead. He came up with this crazy idea to go from the southernmost point in the United States (Key West) to the country's northernmost point in Alaska, not "purely for the adventure" but rather to discover what people across this country think holds us (as a nation) together in a time when we are so torn apart on several issues. His intention is not to "take the pulse of the nation," an impossible task, but to ask his question to the people he meets along the way. His vehicle of choice for the journey is a leased, classic Airstream trailer, "wanderlust made visible and tangible." With his wife and two dogs in tow, he made his long journey, choosing to mainly follow America's backroads and highways, following the journey made by Lewis and Clark as much as possible to the west coast. Along the way he meets a wide variety of people, visits places and does things he's never before experienced.
As someone who also loves to travel America's backroads and smaller highways, camp, stop in at mom-and-pop eateries and start conversations with perfect strangers I meet, this book definitely appealed to me. I would love to retrace Mr. Caputo's footsteps/tire tracks someday, but since that's probably not ever going to happen, reading about his journey is almost as good. His descriptions of places I've been are right on the money, but it's the people he meets that keep things really interesting. "Listening" to them and hearing what they have to say about America, their communities and themselves is an eye opener. There are funny parts to this book and some where you just want to cry. I'd love to hear this as an audio book with the author doing the reading.
Just a few minor niggles: a) while I happen to share many of the author's points of view, I can see how his political musing might be a turnoff for some people who don't -- I felt the emphasis should have been more on what other Americans thought, considering the premise of his adventure; and b) a map would have been extremely helpful -- I had my Ipad on my lap looking at each highway, each road, each town, etc.where a map could have provided a one-stop visual representation of the trip.
All in all, The Longest Road is an enjoyable read, and I've selected this book for one of my book group's choices for the fall. Definitely recommended; try not to let the politics get in the way of the rest of the journey.
The author's father once said that there was nothing like being "in a car with everything you need, nothing more, and an open road in front of you." Jack Kerouac wrote "Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is so ever on the road." When Caputo's father, who loved being on the road himself, died, the author realized at age 69 that a lot of his own life was behind him, and he pondered about life ahead. He came up with this crazy idea to go from the southernmost point in the United States (Key West) to the country's northernmost point in Alaska, not "purely for the adventure" but rather to discover what people across this country think holds us (as a nation) together in a time when we are so torn apart on several issues. His intention is not to "take the pulse of the nation," an impossible task, but to ask his question to the people he meets along the way. His vehicle of choice for the journey is a leased, classic Airstream trailer, "wanderlust made visible and tangible." With his wife and two dogs in tow, he made his long journey, choosing to mainly follow America's backroads and highways, following the journey made by Lewis and Clark as much as possible to the west coast. Along the way he meets a wide variety of people, visits places and does things he's never before experienced.
As someone who also loves to travel America's backroads and smaller highways, camp, stop in at mom-and-pop eateries and start conversations with perfect strangers I meet, this book definitely appealed to me. I would love to retrace Mr. Caputo's footsteps/tire tracks someday, but since that's probably not ever going to happen, reading about his journey is almost as good. His descriptions of places I've been are right on the money, but it's the people he meets that keep things really interesting. "Listening" to them and hearing what they have to say about America, their communities and themselves is an eye opener. There are funny parts to this book and some where you just want to cry. I'd love to hear this as an audio book with the author doing the reading.
Just a few minor niggles: a) while I happen to share many of the author's points of view, I can see how his political musing might be a turnoff for some people who don't -- I felt the emphasis should have been more on what other Americans thought, considering the premise of his adventure; and b) a map would have been extremely helpful -- I had my Ipad on my lap looking at each highway, each road, each town, etc.where a map could have provided a one-stop visual representation of the trip.
All in all, The Longest Road is an enjoyable read, and I've selected this book for one of my book group's choices for the fall. Definitely recommended; try not to let the politics get in the way of the rest of the journey.
November 18, 2013
I don't want to sound as though I'm panning the book, which wasn't bad although the insights Caputo sought seemed almost incidental and tacked-on to fulfill the book contract. My problem was that I never really "bonded" with the couple as a reader. It would be a tad harsh to say they were "slumming it"; however, the tone did become a bit condescending in places, as though the folks along the way were ... specimens. I wasn't that keen on the details focusing on the trailer itself, nor really on the dogs. Landscape description was the strongest feature for me.
Really 2.5 stars, if Goodreads had that option. Glad I listened to a library book, rather than paying for a copy. Audio narration fit well, no problem there.
Really 2.5 stars, if Goodreads had that option. Glad I listened to a library book, rather than paying for a copy. Audio narration fit well, no problem there.
July 25, 2013
I do enjoy Travel Adventures, and I love a wry sense of humor; this book has both. This is the adventure Philip, his wife and 2 dogs took, traveling in an old Airstream from the Southernmost Point of the Continental US to the Northernmost Point reachable by road: Key West, Florida to Deadhorse, Alaska. On the way he asked those he met What unites and divides our country. Is it surprising most feel a positive uniting? Should it be surprising?
Caputo writes of their trials and tribulations, as well as the beauty of the country along the way. Having such gypsy blood, it makes me want to just pick up and head on out, letting the road take me where it leads. The book led me to many more books I want read as well as wonderful quotes. Such as this one:
Speaking of an amateur astronomer they met: “I looked out the window and saw him, still at his scope in the cool desert night, peering out across oceans of time and space. An old man, alone, immersed in the majesty and beauty of creation. Willa Cather said it best: “That is happiness, to be dissolved into something complete and great”
A book I highly recommend!
Caputo writes of their trials and tribulations, as well as the beauty of the country along the way. Having such gypsy blood, it makes me want to just pick up and head on out, letting the road take me where it leads. The book led me to many more books I want read as well as wonderful quotes. Such as this one:
Speaking of an amateur astronomer they met: “I looked out the window and saw him, still at his scope in the cool desert night, peering out across oceans of time and space. An old man, alone, immersed in the majesty and beauty of creation. Willa Cather said it best: “That is happiness, to be dissolved into something complete and great”
A book I highly recommend!
August 19, 2013
One of my favorite weekend activities is to hit the back roads to explore the countryside. I take photos of barns, hike with my dogs, discover history, eat in small restaurants and meet a variety of people. I plan road trips for fun. I would like to drive Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway. I don't need Paris, France when there are 24 towns in the U.S. named Paris.
Philip Caputo took on the challenge of driving from the southernmost point of the U.S. in Key West, Florida to the northernmost point accessible by road in Deadhorse, Alaska. The trip took four months and covered 17,000 miles in 2011.
As with most long trips, I lost steam in the last few days of the trip ( last quarter of the book). If you are into road tripping, this is a good book for vicarious travel and ideas. If you need more action than a muddy dog, middle America outrage or backed up travel trailer water systems, it would be best to move along.
Philip Caputo took on the challenge of driving from the southernmost point of the U.S. in Key West, Florida to the northernmost point accessible by road in Deadhorse, Alaska. The trip took four months and covered 17,000 miles in 2011.
As with most long trips, I lost steam in the last few days of the trip ( last quarter of the book). If you are into road tripping, this is a good book for vicarious travel and ideas. If you need more action than a muddy dog, middle America outrage or backed up travel trailer water systems, it would be best to move along.
November 14, 2013
From Lewis and Clark to Jack Kerouac "on the road" American literature usually goes from east to west, a few have gone from west to east and Steinbeck and Charley circumnavigated. Caputo's is only south to north voyage journal that I know of. (In Alaska he learns he's been preceded by a traveler originating in Tierra del Fuego, perhaps another book is yet to come.)
The book chronicles the Caputo's (Phil, wife Leslie and their two English setters) trip from Key West, Florida to Deadhorse, Alaska. They went classic by renting 1962 19 ft Airstream dubbed "Ethel", hitched to contemporary (2007) Toyota Tundra dubbed "Fred".
Such a trip could produce thousands of pages so any author would have to be selective. Would the book describe the scenery? People? Sociology? History? Each town? Noting South Carolina's commemoration of the Civil War and radio talk of succession, Caputo says in this trip he will check to see if the the country is really pulling apart. While he comes back to this theme from time to time, the book eclectic. It's a stream of conversations with the people he meets and with Leslie, anecdotes about the places visited and the antics of his dogs.
The Ansel Woodenknife interview provides the most perspective on life (and very little on the topic of rifts in America) and the visit to Deadhorse provides the most interesting of the place descriptions (and its being part of the USA is almost inconsequential to the visit). There are some interesting contrasts in the waning towns of the mid-west (Lebanon, KS, is a stand out) to the boom in the Bakkan Oil Fields.
Unlike most travel books, there is very little on the metrics. What month was the sweltering weather or the driving rain? My review copy had no maps. I didn't get my bearings until p.226: Key West to Cape Disappointment was 56 days, and more specifically on p. 254 Key West to the Alaska border trip was 72 days covering 7257 miles.
The greatest portion of the book is devoted to the "lower 48" on his route, with only 50 pages for the areas I was most interested in: British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska
The book is pleasant. While I don't see it as special today, I wonder if like Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley" because of the unusual route, it will be read for years to come by armchair travelers everywhere.
The book chronicles the Caputo's (Phil, wife Leslie and their two English setters) trip from Key West, Florida to Deadhorse, Alaska. They went classic by renting 1962 19 ft Airstream dubbed "Ethel", hitched to contemporary (2007) Toyota Tundra dubbed "Fred".
Such a trip could produce thousands of pages so any author would have to be selective. Would the book describe the scenery? People? Sociology? History? Each town? Noting South Carolina's commemoration of the Civil War and radio talk of succession, Caputo says in this trip he will check to see if the the country is really pulling apart. While he comes back to this theme from time to time, the book eclectic. It's a stream of conversations with the people he meets and with Leslie, anecdotes about the places visited and the antics of his dogs.
The Ansel Woodenknife interview provides the most perspective on life (and very little on the topic of rifts in America) and the visit to Deadhorse provides the most interesting of the place descriptions (and its being part of the USA is almost inconsequential to the visit). There are some interesting contrasts in the waning towns of the mid-west (Lebanon, KS, is a stand out) to the boom in the Bakkan Oil Fields.
Unlike most travel books, there is very little on the metrics. What month was the sweltering weather or the driving rain? My review copy had no maps. I didn't get my bearings until p.226: Key West to Cape Disappointment was 56 days, and more specifically on p. 254 Key West to the Alaska border trip was 72 days covering 7257 miles.
The greatest portion of the book is devoted to the "lower 48" on his route, with only 50 pages for the areas I was most interested in: British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska
The book is pleasant. While I don't see it as special today, I wonder if like Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley" because of the unusual route, it will be read for years to come by armchair travelers everywhere.
March 29, 2016
I knew I liked this book, because when I was finished reading it post-its were sticking out of it like thick eyelashes.
Philip Caputo decides to take a road trip from one end of America to the other with his wife, Leslie, and his two dogs. He's ostensibly looking for the reason the United States of America is so united even now, even when Americans disagree about a lot of issues.
I liked how Caputo loves his wife and his dogs. I liked his Zen attitude (as in: people always want, no matter how much one has one always wants more, when you stop wanting then you can find happiness). I liked his thoughts about immigrants and race relations, prejudice and discrimination. He was smart, but not so uptight he couldn't poke fun at himself. That is important, because non-fiction writers who take themselves too seriously are a blight. He changes his mind and his point of view on some issues and this ability to accept that he may have been wrong about one or two things is refreshing and endearing.
He doesn't hit you over the head with his politics, and just lets you come to your own conclusions, which is great.
This book is very American. It captures a bit of the essence of America, what it means to live in the United States (not necessarily be born there, but to make your home there). It also speaks a lot to the appeal of travel, the open road, and a restless, nomadic type instinct that lies dormant in most people.
"It's as if a magical pollen swirls in the air of this country, summoning up dreams in the waking mind."
Philip Caputo decides to take a road trip from one end of America to the other with his wife, Leslie, and his two dogs. He's ostensibly looking for the reason the United States of America is so united even now, even when Americans disagree about a lot of issues.
I liked how Caputo loves his wife and his dogs. I liked his Zen attitude (as in: people always want, no matter how much one has one always wants more, when you stop wanting then you can find happiness). I liked his thoughts about immigrants and race relations, prejudice and discrimination. He was smart, but not so uptight he couldn't poke fun at himself. That is important, because non-fiction writers who take themselves too seriously are a blight. He changes his mind and his point of view on some issues and this ability to accept that he may have been wrong about one or two things is refreshing and endearing.
He doesn't hit you over the head with his politics, and just lets you come to your own conclusions, which is great.
This book is very American. It captures a bit of the essence of America, what it means to live in the United States (not necessarily be born there, but to make your home there). It also speaks a lot to the appeal of travel, the open road, and a restless, nomadic type instinct that lies dormant in most people.
"It's as if a magical pollen swirls in the air of this country, summoning up dreams in the waking mind."
June 15, 2013
It's road trip season and here's a book that will get you in the mood to hit the road.
Philip Caputo, who has written novels and nonfiction, starting with his Vietnam memoir of 1977, A Rumor of War, was in a philosophical frame of mind as he approached seventy. He wanted to take a long trip and the journalist in him couldn't imagine just wandering about aimlessly. He decided to take the pulse of the nation and find out what Americans think it is that holds us together as a nation, if in fact, we really do think anything does. He wasn't sure what he'd hear, judging by the divisiveness that seems to be defining us lately.
He loaded up a vintage Airstream, he and his wife took a few months off, and they started at the southernmost point in the continental U.S., in Florida, and headed for the northernmost, in Alaska.
It's a rather vague excuse for a trip, and didn't seem to capture the imagination of most of the people he talked to, but they humored him and tried to give him an honest and thoughtful answer. Meanwhile, in true road trip style, Caputo fills in the long stretches with historical trivia, political thoughts, and random conversation.
Despite the lack of a consensus among the people he met, The Longest Road is a pleasant ride with a chatty driver and lots of friendly people along the way.
Philip Caputo, who has written novels and nonfiction, starting with his Vietnam memoir of 1977, A Rumor of War, was in a philosophical frame of mind as he approached seventy. He wanted to take a long trip and the journalist in him couldn't imagine just wandering about aimlessly. He decided to take the pulse of the nation and find out what Americans think it is that holds us together as a nation, if in fact, we really do think anything does. He wasn't sure what he'd hear, judging by the divisiveness that seems to be defining us lately.
He loaded up a vintage Airstream, he and his wife took a few months off, and they started at the southernmost point in the continental U.S., in Florida, and headed for the northernmost, in Alaska.
It's a rather vague excuse for a trip, and didn't seem to capture the imagination of most of the people he talked to, but they humored him and tried to give him an honest and thoughtful answer. Meanwhile, in true road trip style, Caputo fills in the long stretches with historical trivia, political thoughts, and random conversation.
Despite the lack of a consensus among the people he met, The Longest Road is a pleasant ride with a chatty driver and lots of friendly people along the way.
February 16, 2014
I think it is impossible to condense a road trip of 9 days and 8,314 miles into a book anyone could lift. Fortunately, Mr. Caputo has the skill to give us wonderful tale summarizing their adventures.
Fortunately, the return 5,000 miles back 'home' only took 9 pages.
This is the kind of book that inspires me to get busy planning the two trips we have planned for this year and 2015. It was an excellent story.
Fortunately, the return 5,000 miles back 'home' only took 9 pages.
This is the kind of book that inspires me to get busy planning the two trips we have planned for this year and 2015. It was an excellent story.
October 2, 2013
I found this "road trip" book to be fascinating. Caputo begins his journey in Key West Florida and travels to Deadhorse, Alaska to find out what holds oh is diverse nation together. Together with his wife Leslie and two dogs they travel in an Airstream trailer. Throughout the journey I felt like was traveling in the Airstream, trailer seeing the USA and meeting with a variety of people. Caputo's was able to hold my interest through both the descriptions of travel challenges as well interactions with the various people he encountered. The book has humor as well as pathos in his many personal stories of people he met on his journey.
I especially liked the book because we recently took a road trip in which we travelled through a small section of Caputo's "road trip".
I especially liked the book because we recently took a road trip in which we travelled through a small section of Caputo's "road trip".
August 21, 2013
Philip Caputo and his wife Leslie decide to rent an Airstream trailer and drive from Key West (the southernmost point of the United States) to the Arctic Circle (the northernmost point), asking people the question "What holds us together?"
Summers on the road in his childhood predisposed him to this venture, but the main factor was the growing anger fueling American public discourse - much greater in 2010 than in earlier years. "In Texas, crowds at a political event had called on their governor to secede from the union...Strangely enough, much of this fury wasn't directed at the financial mandarins who had brought the nation to the edge of the abyss; no, it fell on citizens like the aging engineer who, afflicted with Parkinson's disease, was mocked and abused at a Tea Party rally in Ohio because he supported health-care reform. That was the America I didn't recognize -- spiteful and cruel."
"Was the country really as fractured as it appeared in the media?" is his underlying question. He ends by answering "no," but I'm not sure his predisposition to find our kinder, gentler side didn't skew the results.
In one encounter after another, he seems to pull away from asking the tough questions that might bring out the anger.
Or maybe it's the people he meets who pull away...
Encounters that struck me:
Dean Cannon, Republican speaker of Florida's House of Representatives: "the vast majority of the Tea Party people...aren't so much angry as they're afraid...of the country...losing sight of the fact that liberty and personal freedoms are the primary characteristics distinguishing us from every other country in the free world. The gravest threat to liberty is too strong a central government."
Caputo disagrees with this point, seeing instead "bigness" as the gravest threat to liberty: "big banks and big corporations in alliance with big government." The civil tone of this encounter encourages him to believe that he can talk with "righties" without having "a TV-style shout fest."
In Alabama, Leslie and Phil join disaster relief efforts, working with people who've taken time out of their lives to come from all over the USA to help -- and this generosity seems more fundamentally bonding than the idea of liberty.
In Missouri, they meet Carol Harrison Springer who's won a battle with the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a project to dam the Meramec Valley and flood her family farm. "People thought we were crazy...You can't fight the U. S. Army and the federal government...But a lot of farmers had already lost their land to eminent domain. We were going to lose ours, and we had to make a last-ditch effort." Springer thinks the glue is the belief that "we've more in common than not, that we're more alike than we're different. I'm not sure it's true, but the important thing is that we believe it is."
Duane in Belleville, Kansas, says "too many taxes going to things the people who pay them don't believe in" but then pulls back, saying "don't get me on my soapbox." Caputo wonders, re. our willingness to help neighbors in need, "if that sense of community would survive the depopulation of the Great Plains and all the places like it. I had my own vision of the America my grandchildren might inherit: huge, sprawling megalopolises with nothing in between...People would be connected by social media, or whatever their equivalent will be...but could the impersonality of electronic links ever replace...the joys or sorrows or needs revealed in the expressions on someone's face, in a tone of voice, a touch? Would neighbors...pull together or pull apart?"
Grand Island, Nebraska - JBS Swift's meatpacking plants recruited legal Somali and Sudanese workers for the lowpaying, backbreaking jobs in their factories. A retired farmer believes "Americans have become too soft, leaving immigrants to take on the tough, dirty jobs." He tried to hire locals to pick his sugar beet crop, but "they didn't care if they worked well or not." The next year, he hired Mexicans and all went well.
In the Rockies, they interview wranglers - two women and two men - who "don't blend in very well with our generation...they get so far away from nature." The wranglers watch little TV - "It would be nice not to have this skewed perspective on the television. Yes, there are extremely left wing and extremely right wing, but the middle ground very rarely gets reported on...there's a huge disconnect between urban life and rural life. There's nooo sense of community in that respect."
I stopped adding bookmarks as they moved up into Canada and Alaska, since there the difficulties of the journey tended to overshadow the encounters with people. Caputo adds a bit too much detail for me, about the Airstream trailer's peculiarities and other mechanical stuff, although some might be fascinated by this.
Ok reading while it lasts, but I don't remember a lot...and although I know more about certain parts of the country than I did, I'm not sure I am any clearer on what exactly holds us together. Unless it's our sheer desire to find something to hold us together. That will seems quite strong in most people Caputo meets. When face to face with each other, almost everyone avoids the anger. What does this mean for our public life and our future together as a body politic? Hard to say, hard to say...
Summers on the road in his childhood predisposed him to this venture, but the main factor was the growing anger fueling American public discourse - much greater in 2010 than in earlier years. "In Texas, crowds at a political event had called on their governor to secede from the union...Strangely enough, much of this fury wasn't directed at the financial mandarins who had brought the nation to the edge of the abyss; no, it fell on citizens like the aging engineer who, afflicted with Parkinson's disease, was mocked and abused at a Tea Party rally in Ohio because he supported health-care reform. That was the America I didn't recognize -- spiteful and cruel."
"Was the country really as fractured as it appeared in the media?" is his underlying question. He ends by answering "no," but I'm not sure his predisposition to find our kinder, gentler side didn't skew the results.
In one encounter after another, he seems to pull away from asking the tough questions that might bring out the anger.
Or maybe it's the people he meets who pull away...
Encounters that struck me:
Dean Cannon, Republican speaker of Florida's House of Representatives: "the vast majority of the Tea Party people...aren't so much angry as they're afraid...of the country...losing sight of the fact that liberty and personal freedoms are the primary characteristics distinguishing us from every other country in the free world. The gravest threat to liberty is too strong a central government."
Caputo disagrees with this point, seeing instead "bigness" as the gravest threat to liberty: "big banks and big corporations in alliance with big government." The civil tone of this encounter encourages him to believe that he can talk with "righties" without having "a TV-style shout fest."
In Alabama, Leslie and Phil join disaster relief efforts, working with people who've taken time out of their lives to come from all over the USA to help -- and this generosity seems more fundamentally bonding than the idea of liberty.
In Missouri, they meet Carol Harrison Springer who's won a battle with the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a project to dam the Meramec Valley and flood her family farm. "People thought we were crazy...You can't fight the U. S. Army and the federal government...But a lot of farmers had already lost their land to eminent domain. We were going to lose ours, and we had to make a last-ditch effort." Springer thinks the glue is the belief that "we've more in common than not, that we're more alike than we're different. I'm not sure it's true, but the important thing is that we believe it is."
Duane in Belleville, Kansas, says "too many taxes going to things the people who pay them don't believe in" but then pulls back, saying "don't get me on my soapbox." Caputo wonders, re. our willingness to help neighbors in need, "if that sense of community would survive the depopulation of the Great Plains and all the places like it. I had my own vision of the America my grandchildren might inherit: huge, sprawling megalopolises with nothing in between...People would be connected by social media, or whatever their equivalent will be...but could the impersonality of electronic links ever replace...the joys or sorrows or needs revealed in the expressions on someone's face, in a tone of voice, a touch? Would neighbors...pull together or pull apart?"
Grand Island, Nebraska - JBS Swift's meatpacking plants recruited legal Somali and Sudanese workers for the lowpaying, backbreaking jobs in their factories. A retired farmer believes "Americans have become too soft, leaving immigrants to take on the tough, dirty jobs." He tried to hire locals to pick his sugar beet crop, but "they didn't care if they worked well or not." The next year, he hired Mexicans and all went well.
In the Rockies, they interview wranglers - two women and two men - who "don't blend in very well with our generation...they get so far away from nature." The wranglers watch little TV - "It would be nice not to have this skewed perspective on the television. Yes, there are extremely left wing and extremely right wing, but the middle ground very rarely gets reported on...there's a huge disconnect between urban life and rural life. There's nooo sense of community in that respect."
I stopped adding bookmarks as they moved up into Canada and Alaska, since there the difficulties of the journey tended to overshadow the encounters with people. Caputo adds a bit too much detail for me, about the Airstream trailer's peculiarities and other mechanical stuff, although some might be fascinated by this.
Ok reading while it lasts, but I don't remember a lot...and although I know more about certain parts of the country than I did, I'm not sure I am any clearer on what exactly holds us together. Unless it's our sheer desire to find something to hold us together. That will seems quite strong in most people Caputo meets. When face to face with each other, almost everyone avoids the anger. What does this mean for our public life and our future together as a body politic? Hard to say, hard to say...
January 20, 2024
A fascinating adventure driving across America, going from Key West, Florida to Deadhorse, Alaska to find out what makes America, America. The author and his wife took this trip in 2011, but I can't help but wonder how this trip would go in 2024.
May 22, 2022
3.5 stars. Enjoyable. He tends to talk more about the people he meets than the actual places at times. Which is ok, but he rambles on at times.
September 12, 2013
Only a third of the way through Phil Caputo's "The Longest Road" on this first day of reading it, and I haven't been so entertained or instructed by my fellow Americans since reading Studs Terkel. Yesterday, the 12th anniversary of the worst crime ever committed against my country, I was wondering what makes the pluribus unum? Still suffering 9/11 and reeling from the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, Americans are mad, by which I mean angry AND crazy. In my state recently, an aging engineer suffering Parkinson's disease was cruelly mocked and abused at a Tea Party rally for supporting health-care reform. How does a country that has become so spiteful, so ugly and mean keep itself together?
I was browsing shelves in my favorite independent book store as I pondered this question. Amazingly, I came upon "The Longest Road". Leafing through it, I discovered that Mr. Caputo decided upon his long road trip and wrote this wonderful book in order to uncover answers to that question.
His story and his trip begin with this metaphor: the Rio Grande Rift is slowly tearing the continent apart at the rate of 2 millimeters a year. The country itself is being ripped apart at a faster rate by Americans who want their states to declare independence from the union, by Americans who scream racist obscenities and support voter suppression, by Americans who disrespect the President because he's an African-American, by Americans ranting incoherently and without qualification about subjects they know nothing about, by Americans whose greatest dread is that the feds are planning to take away their guns, and by Americans who fervently stand their ground and then feverishly shoot each other to death day after day. Yet, the center holds. After the devastating storm, Americans gather and rally to help their brothers and sisters regardless of race, nationality, religion, political persuasion. Why? How?
I knew that September 11, 2013 was a good day to think about what still holds us together. I began reading "The Longest Road" and now I can't stop.
Rather than write one more review of the Philip Caputo journal, a book I recommend to you, why don't you ask yourself the question, "What holds this enormous country of different races, nationalities, religions, and personality disorders together? Jot down your own, personal answer. Then, read "The Longest Road".
I was browsing shelves in my favorite independent book store as I pondered this question. Amazingly, I came upon "The Longest Road". Leafing through it, I discovered that Mr. Caputo decided upon his long road trip and wrote this wonderful book in order to uncover answers to that question.
His story and his trip begin with this metaphor: the Rio Grande Rift is slowly tearing the continent apart at the rate of 2 millimeters a year. The country itself is being ripped apart at a faster rate by Americans who want their states to declare independence from the union, by Americans who scream racist obscenities and support voter suppression, by Americans who disrespect the President because he's an African-American, by Americans ranting incoherently and without qualification about subjects they know nothing about, by Americans whose greatest dread is that the feds are planning to take away their guns, and by Americans who fervently stand their ground and then feverishly shoot each other to death day after day. Yet, the center holds. After the devastating storm, Americans gather and rally to help their brothers and sisters regardless of race, nationality, religion, political persuasion. Why? How?
I knew that September 11, 2013 was a good day to think about what still holds us together. I began reading "The Longest Road" and now I can't stop.
Rather than write one more review of the Philip Caputo journal, a book I recommend to you, why don't you ask yourself the question, "What holds this enormous country of different races, nationalities, religions, and personality disorders together? Jot down your own, personal answer. Then, read "The Longest Road".
October 24, 2013
Paul Theroux meets John Steinbeck, sort of. Caputo and his third wife along with two hyper bird dogs take a road trip in the summer from sun to snow. Shades of Travels with Charley but he's also pulling an Airstream trailer, which if you've ever pulled a trailer gives an entirely new dimension to the experience-one filled with anxiety when it comes to parking and backing up. You have to admire a 70 year old man for doing this. He's traveled plenty of places but he's always wanted to do something like this; plus he like Steinbeck is in search of answers about America. Caputo like the author of another book (The Unwinding by George Packer) is concerned about the fate of America. Are we the people as dysfunctional as our government? Caputo, a liberal, chronicles his adventures meeting conservative and liberal folks along the way. He goes out of his way to meet strangers and discuss with them his concerns. He's unsettled by some folks and reassured by others but comes away perhaps in awe of we the people. Plus there's the anxiety and hassle of traveling with pets. You love them but not always do other folks love them and he has not one but two dogs who are bird dogs and full of energy. So much energy they are often pulling down his wife and dragging her through swamps, creeks, etc. You get the picture. There is also the matter of two people being in cramped quarters, bad weather, and the inevitable gender based direction arguments that can create strains in a relationship. Caputo and his wife Leslie survive their "walkabout" and I envy them their trip of a lifetime. Perhaps the longest road is the one not taken.
October 9, 2015
I loved it. It's a great narrative, with entertaining and interesting conversations with people all along the route from Key West to Deadhorse. The political observations were spot on. The running commentary on Fred (the Tundra) and Ethel (the Airstream) were funny, especially for someone like myself who has had the experience of once being a newbie at traveling with an RV--not exactly the same as a trailer but most of the same issues with refrigerators, hookups, etc. We also have had the experience of traveling with dogs and the challenges that poses, when going to new and out of the way places. Having lived in big cities for years and now living in a small town in the Southwest, the friendliness and openness of the latter is something Caputo captured. Probably most of all, I liked the style, the feel of this book. This is what Caputo does best; it's his journalistic background in action. The mystifying thing is the ostensible "expert" Vine reviewers on Amazon--one calling it a biography (?!) and another saying Caputo has ventured into the "travel genre." I would suppose, but maybe I am ignorant of current genre parlance, that "travel" would mean a guide to locales to visit. That's NOT what this book is. Nor is it anyone's biography. Evidently Amazon doesn't do a great job (or any?) of vetting its Vine reviewers. What it is, is a very intriguing look at the question Caputo tried to pose to everyone--what holds America together (if anything) across the very disparate cultural enclaves from the furthest south to the furthest north.
March 27, 2018
Philip Caputo's conception of taking an Airstream trailer with his wife and two dogs from the southernmost point of the United States (Key West, FL) to the northern tip of the country in Deadhorse, AK (the Arctic Circle) in search of what holds America together sounded like a book right up my alley. My wife and I have been traveling across much of the country the past three years visiting National Park Sites so I thought I had found a kindred spirit - someone with a shared fascination about our country. I was encouraged by the early parts of the book but it starts to run out of gas by the time he gets out of Florida. He conducts some good interviews (I found the ones in Nebraska to be the most interesting) and descriptions of the Natchez Trace Parkway stayed with me. Caputo adds length to this long trip with his curmudgeonly asides about technology or male/female relationships. He also should have considered leaving some of the minutiae about life on the road at one of the rest stops along the way. Descriptions of what they ate for breakfast, hitching and unhitching the Airstream trailer for the umpteenth time, or anything about his two dogs frolicking outdoors quickly start to feel tedious. The payoff of reaching Alaska is particularly disappointing. If the only inspiration he derives from such a spectacular place is, 'the journey had been the destination', then the 8,314 miles he drove to get there make it feel like a waste of gas.
December 14, 2013
I was given a complimentary copy of this book. I'm assuming because #1, I have a blog of our US travels in an RV. www.greatescapefromnj.blogspot.com and and #2 we have Setters as the author does.
I was excited to read this book with common interests. The author was out to discover the different lifestyles and attitudes of the American people in different areas of the country. Interesting concept.
Unfortunately, I was very bored with the book. Maybe because I'm living it or maybe because I've read many RV travel blogs and this seemed more of the same. Yes, there were interesting parts and yes, he speaks of cowboys in Florida, when I thought they were only in the SouthWest. Yes, he speaks of entitled youth. Yes, he gets you thinking outside the box, meaning instead of looking at typical touristy things, to look at the community, the people, the history. But still, this book just did not hold my interest. I'll stick with the bloggers and read their travels and their take on the varied areas of our USA.
I was excited to read this book with common interests. The author was out to discover the different lifestyles and attitudes of the American people in different areas of the country. Interesting concept.
Unfortunately, I was very bored with the book. Maybe because I'm living it or maybe because I've read many RV travel blogs and this seemed more of the same. Yes, there were interesting parts and yes, he speaks of cowboys in Florida, when I thought they were only in the SouthWest. Yes, he speaks of entitled youth. Yes, he gets you thinking outside the box, meaning instead of looking at typical touristy things, to look at the community, the people, the history. But still, this book just did not hold my interest. I'll stick with the bloggers and read their travels and their take on the varied areas of our USA.
October 9, 2021
The Longest Road is basically a travelogue written by American author and journalist Philip Caputo, of a road trip in an Airstream trailer from Florida to Alaska. To add a veneer of newsworthiness to the trip Caputo uses the journey to supposedly gain insight into the national characteristics that bind the citizens of the U.S. together, despite rising political divisions.
It’s tough to turn a trip where nothing much happens into a compelling narrative, and Caputo (while an above average writer) utterly fails in this regard (he’s simply not THAT good of a writer). Added to this the “in search of America” component feels like little more than an afterthought tacked on to attract a publisher. The responses to his question as to what unites the country are trite and no insights are gained. Here’s a spoiler to save you some time … it’s ‘hope’ … that’s what supposedly unites us.
My main impression of The Longest Road is that of a story that didn’t need to be told and a book that in no way needed to be written.
It’s tough to turn a trip where nothing much happens into a compelling narrative, and Caputo (while an above average writer) utterly fails in this regard (he’s simply not THAT good of a writer). Added to this the “in search of America” component feels like little more than an afterthought tacked on to attract a publisher. The responses to his question as to what unites the country are trite and no insights are gained. Here’s a spoiler to save you some time … it’s ‘hope’ … that’s what supposedly unites us.
My main impression of The Longest Road is that of a story that didn’t need to be told and a book that in no way needed to be written.
January 19, 2015
Caputo wrote a travelog of a very large chunk of rural America , enjoying his time and trying to find out how a country with such human diversity as the USA could remain bonded as one nation. He spoke with Inuit Alaskans, African Americans, Lakota Sioux and multiple others. He tried to discover how individual petroleum engineers and earth firsters can still proudly claim affinity for the USA though much separates them. I am not sure Caputo ever explained this but he is a great story teller who provides insight to many cultural groups across America.
I was initially drawn to this book as Caputo and his wife traveled for three months in a 19' Airstream trailer very similar to ours, purchased a year ago. It worked for them, even driving up and through Alaska and Canada. It is working for us too.
I was initially drawn to this book as Caputo and his wife traveled for three months in a 19' Airstream trailer very similar to ours, purchased a year ago. It worked for them, even driving up and through Alaska and Canada. It is working for us too.
August 7, 2014
I enjoy road trips and travel essays so this one was right up my alley. Disappointed originally as he veered off a "blue road", US 41 in Southwest Florida on his way to Tampa once he discovered what an ugly clog it is in that part of the state and headed to Interstate 75 as most of us do. Too bad, I was looking forward to comments on Port Charlotte, Venice, Brandenton, Anna Maria Island and other little known gems in my corner of the world. But soon, back on the road through the smaller towns and lots of interesting places in search of "what holds America together". Interesting folks along the way, and some good pragmatic advice for others making this trip or similar. Enjoyable read if you are a road trip fan.
February 22, 2015
Loved this book, perhaps because I am a road trip junkie but also because I enjoyed the wry sense of humor the author injected at regular intervals. A journalist first, he talked with many people along the way about what they thought united or divided people in America. Often their two dogs would be a conversation starter as was the case when they met a young brother/sister duo traveling together. Caputo observed that, "they were a delightful pair, students on a cross country adventure, separated from me by a gap of nearly fifty years, but we had the road in common. The road collapses differences on age and any other difference you can think of".
November 16, 2013
great topic from a writer with a great reputation but the final result falls short compared to other on the road books. Caputo makes some good contrasts between Parkman's Oregon Trail and Kerouac's On the Road but ultimately his political
commentary and condescension toward his subjects is distracting. he even ends on a political note which takes away from the travel aspect. his observations on travel are not
original--it's the journey not the destination. William Least Heat Moons Blue Highways is still the classic to read in this genre and one I'd recommend over The Longest Road.
commentary and condescension toward his subjects is distracting. he even ends on a political note which takes away from the travel aspect. his observations on travel are not
original--it's the journey not the destination. William Least Heat Moons Blue Highways is still the classic to read in this genre and one I'd recommend over The Longest Road.
January 11, 2015
Sort of painful. There was no part of this that got me. I'm sure he's a fine author, but all of this sounded like Steinbeck's "Travels with Charlie" with out the Steinbeck. A series of disconnected stories by a bored observer. Less like his exciting later-in-life-adventure, and more like an idyll writer looking for anything to fill those empty days and empty pages.
Sorta hated it.
Sorta hated it.
July 7, 2015
Enjoyable and eye opening. Caputo asks the question along the way of what is it that binds America together. The answers he receives were diverse but always fascinating. My own two cents: It is our mythology that binds us together, the stories taught to us as children that hold in them some little truth of who we promised ourselves one day we would be.
August 7, 2019
I enjoyed the many slices of America presented in this journey and the political and philosophical insights discovered along the way. Having just completed my own cross-country road trip, I feel like I now understand a little more about what constitutes the United States, and what unites and divides us.
July 6, 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed this road trip book. The author and his wife travel from Florida to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska with a small Airstream trailer. The author's self-deprecating humor and interesting encounters make this book a pleasure to read.
September 24, 2017
What a fabulous book- the premise is wildly simple yet fascinating. The book blends all of my favorite things: the best quality writing, adventure, history, travel, interviews with interesting "characters". I am so glad I read this.
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