Like de Toqueville before her, Simone de Beauvoir analyzes America, its present state and future promise, as only an outsider can, objectively, without influence or taint from the very values and phenomena under examination. If that makes _America Day by Day_ sound like something other than a travel book, good, because it is much, much more.

It is an insightful essay on the very things that define us as a nation: our optimism, our work ethic, our *color line,* and our politics. Offered to us episodically, in the pages of her travel journal, her thoughts on American society are so accurate and penetrating that her conclusions remain relevant today.

And her main conclusion is this: "...America is one of the pivotal points of the world, where the future of man is being played out. To 'like' America, to 'dislike' it -- these words have no meaning. It is a battlefield, and you can only become passionate about the battle it is waging with itself, in which stakes are beyond measure." Everyone should read this book to discover why we are a "pivotal point" and what that means for us and the rest of the nations of the world.

I never met Simone but the visit to America that resulted in this book ended the day I was born and we knew people in common, including Nelson Algren. This book is fun. We think of Simone as the woman who initiated the second wave of feminism with her book, "The Second Sex;" as the companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man plagued by lobsters and his own sense of self; as the globe-trotting political activist. Some may know her as the author of the frightening novel, "She Came To Stay." The Simone who wrote this book was the best part of Simone de Beauvoir. The book is a snapshot of America, entering the center stage of world power, taken by a native of a country whose time of leadership has passed. It is also the story of a middle-aged woman falling in love. This book was unavailable for many years but it is important both as a view of America in mid-century and as an insight into one of the most important women of the 20th century.

An excellent place to begin seeing America through critical eyes. A companion piece to this is Henry Miller's "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare."

This is a collection of letters written from Hunter's Childhood up to his successful Hell's Angels book. The most interesting thing about this book is the immense difficulty he had selling his stories and the desperate poverty in which he lived for years as a struggling writer. I guess like all people I kind of thought that someone this brilliant was just embraced by literary circles, and any problems he had was because he was a drunken, drugged out, crazy freak who upset everyone who tried to help him. This was not the case.
Like many geniuses Hunter was so far ahead of everyone that he had to wait for them to catch up.
The humor is so funny that it almost impossible not to crack up on every page, even in the midst of terrible personal turmoil Hunter was one funny man.
ONE problem, I wish that there were more letters FROM the people he wrote to over the years. Some of the funniest moments were the letters he received from people over the years. More of those exchanges would have helped and made the book much more interesting. That is why it is not 5 stars. It is still worth reading. Especially if you want to be a writer.

Perhaps, as Hunter Thompson suggests in The Proud Highway, people really do take more of a liking to his letters and not his serious work. This statement is easily endorsed by the fine contents that surround it. This is the perfect book for a typical Thompson fan, a collection of eccentric one plus page letters that suit a person with a short attention span. His sylistic prose is best received in short bursts, such as essays, articles, and letters. The letter format also allows us to see the evolution and experimentation Thompson has endured in his life. This pre-gonzo collection is Thompson as himself, not the "Raoul Duke" character he has personified in the past. While Hunter seems incapable of writing anything unautobiographical, the fact remains he is far more qualified to tell this story than any hack biographer seeking to romanticize and sensationalize Thompson's myth for a profit. The Proud Highway tells Thompson's story in a much more engaging fashion than the biographies, though there is no lack of effort and emulation in any of these books. This book should be required reading for aspiring authors.

I have just got through reading this collection of Letters and found it to be worthwhile reading. I received the book as a gift and was not aware of a Fear and Loathing Letters Volume. I found this to be a highway of following (if anyone possibly could) and watching Thompson grow as a writer. While at the Air Force Base working as an editor of the Sports Section, he wrote to his family and friends as well as ex-girlfriends. Probably because he was away from home for the first time.

As the years go on the more this book became more interesting. Between following all over this country we follow him to South America were some of his best articles came from. I have read Hell's Angels and The Great Shark Hunt and found this to tie in with those books. Through his consumption of Old Crow and god only knows what else, we see letters to LBJ, various magazine editors, and Mr. Semonin and start to see the Hunter we all know and love to come out. The thing that makes him "likeable" is his blunt honesty, since he calls them as he sees them. He is intelligent and knows a lot about everything. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read Thompson!

If anything this book offers a chance to see what makes this amazing mind tick!

Ambrose's survey of U.S. foreign policy since 1938 is rigorous and informative. It is one of the few works of its subject and scope capable of captivating beginners and scholars alike. The development of key topics, most notably U.S. policy toward the Middle East and Vietnam, is impressive considering the book's breadth. Only on very few occasions does Ambrose's broad brush fail to discuss adequately the roots and ramifications of U.S. intervention, particularly in Guatemala and Iran. On the whole, however, it is the best book of its kind available.

Those longing for an explanation of U.S. policy through caricatures of demonic presidents and ruthless capitalism will (or should) be somewhat disappointed. The story we read here is, rather, the tale of a nation rising to become the world's greatest power in much the same way as others have throughout history. Of the presidents, even the most dishonest (Nixon) and frightening (Reagan) are depicted as they were: leaders of their times very much imbued--often unfortunately for the rest of the world--with assumptions accepted by most of their fellow Americans.

This is a classic! Simply the best single volume account of American Foreign Policy I have ever read. Ambrose writes in a clear and concise way, leaving nothing out yet avoiding dry, dull text. His analysis is suburb, his conclusions lucid and thought provoking. This is the book to read if you want a comprehensive overview of America's foreign policy of the past 60 years.

This book is an excellent jumping off point for any student of international relations and is quite possibly the best book available for someone who simply wants to know more about American history in the 20th century.

The latest edition of this book (up through Clinton's first term as president) covers roughly 58 years of American foreign poicy in 428 pages; since an entire set of books could easily be written about this period there is going to be a good deal that Ambrose glosses over and skips. If you are looking for detail about any one period in American history, look elsewhere. But if you simply want a map of what has been going on in foreign policy then you will be hard pressed to do better than this book.

"Rise to Globalism" is definitely written from an historical perspective; it reads like a narrative and as such has only the smallest bit of analysis. While this book rates very highly in providing a sense of what has been happening, there is not much to inform you about the political theory, ideology, or trends that underlied decisions that American leaders made in foreign policy. This is not so much a criticism of "Rise to Globalism" (as there is only so much that can be fit into one book); instead take it as a way to differentiate this book from other worthy foreign policy titles that you may be choosing from.

Ambrose's prose is excellent and engaging; often I would read large chunks of this book in one sitting. Admittedly a lot has been going on in world politics and to his credit Ambrose knows what is substantial enough to include, and what details to leave to the reader to seek for herself. This helps the book immeasurably, as it rarely gets bogged down in unnecessary detail.

An overlooked but extremely helpful part of this book is the extensive bibliography. For each chapter, Ambrose includes a lengthy list of books that the reader can examine to more deeply probe anything that has been included in "Rise to Globalism." While anyone can benefit from this feature, the bibliography will be espcially useful for students as it is an excellent way to quickly find other high quality books on foreign relations (especially useful if one needs information for term papers).

Basically, if you are in any way intereseted in American foreign policy this book is a must have. And if you have no interest whatsoever in American foreign policy this book is still highly recommended as it reads very well as a narrative.

I read Sister Carrie when I was a teenager in China. The other day I listened to a Hoosier's holiday on Talking Books. He went back to his hometown after some thirty years. I went back to my hometown, Hangzhou, China and saw my old house now completely destroyed and replaced by a huge scaffolding. Somehow I felt my experience wasn't so different from Dreisers. I liked the book so much I'm going to order a copy to read certain parts again, although I have been in Indianapolis exactly once in my lifetime. Indianapolis and Hangzhou are world's apart. Dreiser and me are only 50 years apart but I feel I knew how he felt. Kai Lai Chung

Theodore Dreiser is one of America's great authors, but he is also an enigma wrapped inside a contradiction. Forever in awe of the "great social forces" lurching mankind forward, and inspired by the great financial titans and clever capitalist geniuses who attempted to reap the whirlwind, Dreiser nevertheless embraced communism late in his life as the antidote for the injustices plaguing mankind. He was a spirited social rebel, railing against orthodoxy and Puritan "Babbitts" who would foist their Midwestern morality down upon him, but at the same time, as he demonstrates in this book, his idealization of the small-town Hoosier philistines in Warsaw, Sullivan, and other whistle stop towns far removed from the Broadway footlights he had known intimately by the time this epic journey to the Heartland commences. Dreiser devoted hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages of prose to attacking the small-town "Babbitts" sharing the views of another world-weary cynic, Henry Louis Mencken. And yet, for all his caustic attitudes toward rigid conventions, Dreiser swoons in near reverie after catching first glimpse of the mundane streets, the old grammar school, feed store, and the simple folk he remembered from his youth. In other passages,examples of plain country living he encounters along the bumpy, dusty backroads of America circa 1914, are ridiculed and scorned as one would commonly expect of Theodore Dreiser and his war against society's religious and social conventions. Nevertheless, Dreiser's personal observations on life are often more engaging and inciteful than in some of his later novels. He is an American master; a pioneer of literary realism, and despite the contradictions, this is a fine and engaging volume exploring a vanished American landscape. Mr. Brinkley is to be commended for presenting it to the reading public again after all these years.

I happen to live very near where this book is set and I enjoyed going out to these places and envisioning Hayduke, Doc, Abbzug, and Seldom Seen traipsing through the boulders and the scrub brush, tearing up bulldozers. Abbey brings the reader into the story well and keeps you there with rowdy chases and funny anecdotes from the slightly insane Hayduke.

More than that, he begins to make you care for his cause. Having seen the devastation in the desert by the Highway dept. and others, I can understand where the motive for the book comes from. Abbey speaks out the only way he knows how, through irreverence, humor, and a whole lot of craziness.

The writing style, while distinctly Abbey, put me off a bit. He starts off with a bang but it takes 100 pages before you really get into it again. His writing style is a little difficult to get through at times but the result is well worth it.

The book is a joy to read and fun. I recommend it to anyone who can step outside of their common sense for a while and just enjoy a good story with a worthwhile moral.

This is definitely a different book. For a fifteen year old like me, it makes damn sure that we realize that the crap the media fills the world with aint true at all.

I read Desert Solitaire over the summer, and enjoyed it thourougly, leading me to check out MWG from teh school library.

Too many people try to peg Abbey as a naturalist. He's not. He says so in the forward to "Journey Home" (which I started last night). They then try to peg him as a "social terrorist," though I don't see what their reasoning is behind that. This book proves that though he was motivated to do so, he also had the common decency to not blow up bridges or other such nonsense. He stopped at burning billboards.

Really, the greatest purpose of this book seems to be that it reminds people that there are some of us left-wingers out here. If that's the most it does, I think that Abbey would still be satisfied.

Austin

This is the first fiction by Abbey that I've read. That it almost reads like a true story largely stems from the keen sense and accurate knowledge of Colorado Plateau geography that Abbey had. His description of the gnarled and surreal landscape---and the interplay of light, sky, and rock---especially of the Canyonlands area of Utah, is so vivid that it harks back to his compulsively readable nonfiction work in "Abbey's Road", "Down the River", "One Life at a Time, Please", and the like. Readers who fancy this setting will benefit from the author's expert familiarity with the Southwest.

I couldn't help but notice that there is a little (or maybe much) of Abbey in every male character of the book: Doc Sarvis' intellectual ruminations and academic bent, Seldom Smith's knowledge of almost every nook and cranny of the canyonlands and the Four Corners area, and George Hayduke's unfettered and no-holds-barred love for the desert and penchant for irreverence, the ultimate desert rat and indestructible desert Rambo. Bonnie Abzzug personifies people, myself included, who love the desert yet do not seem to be sure exactly what to do to stop its corruption, exploitation, and destruction.

A lot of non-PC thoughts, ideas, and convictions nothwithstanding, the book leaves me wondering how much more of the desert can be paved, accessed, bridged, and defaced before we realize it's too late. The characters represent the extreme end of those who feel that "enough is enough".