books:

	• Route 66: The Highway and Its People Susan Croce Kelly Univ of Oklahoma Pr, 1988 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews
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A must in your library if you're interested in Route 66.

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The Best Book on Route 66 in Print

All too many Route 66 books focus on the Kitsch and the primary colors one could see on the Road, and are written in a jokey, 'weren't people in the old days a hoot' style that wears thin in a few pages.

This book by contrast, takes a more serious look at the Mother Road. The photos are by turns otherworldy and 'down home' and the writing is crisp, factual and engaging. I found out more than I ever expected about the Road, its rise and fall, and the people on the road and in the towns along its path.

It's reminiscent in many ways of some of Studs Turkel's oral histories, as the people 'of and on' the road tell their stories in first person, but here you also have the advantage of the journalistic and historical perspective the writer offers, and the undeniable impact of the photos, which tell stories that mere words cannot.

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Some quotes from press reviews of the book include:

Wall Street Journal
'...while the new interstates are faster and safer, it is impossible not to miss old Route 66. Fortunately, the words and pictures of this delightful book preserve the memories of a road that ran through everyone's life.'

Library Journal
'Route 66-the late, lamented American Main Street that ran from Chicago to the Pacific-is here given life once again. Those who served its travelers for nearly 50 years (selling Indian artifacts, 'hamburgs,' and chunks of petrified wood, or renting rooms, patching tires, and digging the wounded out of head-on collisions) offer memories both enthusiastic and touching. . .
An enjoyable and rewarding book on a uniquely important road that turned the heat up on the American melting pot.'

Arizona Highways
'Susan Croce Kelly and Quinta Scott spent seven years traveling the route from end to end, interviewing and photographing the people and structures that gave old 66 its flavor. The text is carefully researched and well written, and the 93 photographs (appropriately, black and white) provide convincing images of ordinary people and places lacking the glamour of those at either end of the 2,200-mile-long line.'

Booklist
'The evocative photographs and interviews pay tribute to thousands of small businesses and the people who fueled, sheltered, and entertained millions of travelers. This is a fascinating study of individual entrepreneurs and the growth of advertising, as well as a paean to a vanished way of life.'

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I recommend this book to anyone interested in histories of the 20th century, the impact of the automobile in American life, and to anyone who appreciates fine photography.

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Quinta Scott and Susan Croce Kelly pay homage to Route 66, the "great diagonal highway," in images and words that sharply evoke the past and flesh out the legend the highway has become. The two-lane blacktop--traveled in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Bobby Troup's ever-popular postwar jazz tune, and a filmed-on-location television series of the '60s--is recalled in duotones of motels, cafes, gas stations, and trading posts, along with many of their owners. Interviews with the proprietors and the travelers they served, along with people like sign painter Jack Fuss and cave promoter Lyman Riley, provide much of the color.

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