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Title: Uneasy Rider : The Interstate Way of Knowledge by Mike Bryan ISBN: 0-679-41671-4 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 25 March, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (5 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: What fun!
Comment: This book definitely kept my interest. Full of random adventures across America, the author has many encounters with eccentric people, strange sights, and discovers the spirit of our country. A very fun read, inspired me to take a road trip!

Rating: 2
Summary: Looking for the soul of America in West Texas
Comment: Mike Bryan starts with the premise that the true soul of America is to be found along its interstates, which have replaced its small towns as the true heart of the nation. This is a perfectly reasonable premise, but then he botches it by limiting his search to, of all places, west Texas, with some forays into New Mexico and Arizona. There is also a memorable stopover in the quirky community of Laughlin, Nevada, which is sort of like Vegas for people without teeth (see, I can be a witty travel writer, too!). The problem at the heart of this book is that Bryan has focused his narrative on a part of the US that is just too darned boring and soulless (and this coming from a customer-reviewer in Saskatchewan - oh well).

The best passages are when the author interviews law enforcement personnel. He rides with the highway patrol, and spends time with border patrol officers and trucking enforcement officers, all of whom see humanity from a different perspective than the rest of us. Any travel writer must strike a balance between revealing too much versus too little of one's personal life, and Bryan errs on the side of revealing too much. I really don't care about his sperm motility, and his accounts of how he and his wife visited various fertility specialists fall under the label of "too much information." The book's premise is a sound one - the interstate system is quintessentially American, and a better place than most to measure the pulse of the nation - but a broader geographic scope would have been a plus.

Rating: 3
Summary: He's not William Least Heat Moon
Comment: Mike Bryan doesn't like Blue Highways.

He doesn't like the book of William Least Heat Moon, and he doesn't like the concept, either. For Bryan, the Interstate is what we've become and the real place to acquire knowledge.

Although the book is entertaining in spots, the revelations are shallow and the writing, for the most part, uninspired. And the road trips themselves are not very comprehensive: the book revolves around roads between Dallas and El Paso, with brief excursions elsewhere.

If you're looking for something in the road trip genre other than Blue Highways, I'd suggest the books of Dayton Duncan instead.