Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: One for the Road : Revised Edition by Tony Horwitz ISBN: 0-375-70613-5 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 05 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.07 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Find out what Australia is about
Comment: The best kind of book - a non-fiction page turner. Horwitz writes about his slow grinding hitchhiking tour through the expanse and heat of the Australian outback. He does so with constant wit and determined irreverance. It is just plain fun to be along for the ride.
But I don't think his only purpose is entertain us. I think he also wants to show us the character of the Australian people. He succeeds. We discover a tough, independent, hard drinking, hard fighting, and hard laughing people. He tells his stories so well that we are left changed. We are left with a fresh new look at the what Australia is about.
Read this book. You'll look forward to every new page and when you are done, you are left a little changed. What more could you want in a book?
Rating: 4
Summary: Funny and lucid travel writing
Comment: The author, an American ex-pat living and working as a newspaper reporter in Australia, gets the wanderlust and decides to hitch around Australia. He circumnavigates the continent, nearly, and travels deep into the Northern Territory and South Australia. (He wisely avoids the utter emptiness of Western Australia.) He meets a variety of Australians: truckies, anti-environmental loggers and tourists, racists, Aborigines in beat-up "utes" (utility vehicles, like pickup trucks), and professional wanderers. He hunkers down in a ditch during a cyclone, wonders at the oddities of Australian cartography ("rivers" and "lakes" are plentiful in name, but dry as dust in reality), and watches as his chauffeurs down dozens of beers per hour. It seems that the Outback, for all its barren aridity, is dotted with pubs. Horwitz is an excellent writer. He descibes the heat and the flies with great detail, finds poingnacy in meeting one of the only other Jews in Broome at Passover, and draws humor from the most aggrieving situations, such as the publican who hates serving food or letting rooms. This book is a page-turner, but more than that, it introduces a great part of Australian culture with wit and skill. Great reading.
Rating: 4
Summary: Equal in quality yet different than Bryson
Comment: This book makes an excellent companion to Bill Bryson's 'In a Sunburned Country.' As Horowitz spent much of his time hitchhiking through Australia (as opposed to Bryson's quick train and driving strategy), he met many more strange characters than Bryson, and his descriptions of the locals are spot-on and often laugh-out-loud funny. His road trip with four aboriginals in a dilapidated pickup truck is of special note.
My only criticism of the book is that I am not a particular fan of present tense travel writing ('I dash up the hill, the horde of angry kangaroos hopping in thundering unison behind me' -- not a real quote), in which this book is written. It's a minor gripe, however; Horowitz is a former correspondent of the Wall Street Journal and an excellent storyteller. Highly recommended!
 |
Title: Baghdad Without a Map: And Other Misadventures in Arabia by Tony Horwitz ISBN: 0452267455 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: January, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Confederates in the Attic : Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by TONY HORWITZ ISBN: 067975833X Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 22 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: Blue Latitudes : Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz ISBN: 0312422601 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: The Devil May Care: Fifty Intrepid Americans and Their Quest for the Unknown by Tony Horwitz ISBN: 0195169220 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
 |
Title: Australia : True Stories of Life Down Under (Travelers' Tales) by Larry Habegger ISBN: 1885211406 Publisher: Travelers' Tales Inc Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
