The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World (Vintage)
From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Newjack, an absorbing book about roads and their power to change the world.
Roads bind our world—metaphorically and literally—transforming landscapes and the lives of the people who inhabit them. Roads have unparalleled power to impact communities, unite worlds and sunder them, and reveal the hopes and fears of those who travel them.
With his marvelous eye for detail and his contagious e
What is included
How Much Should You Expect to Pay?
The The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World (Vintage) is available on various online shopping sites at different prices .But The cheapest we have seen it is on Amazon who consistently sell this The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World (Vintage) at discounted price. Click here for pricing at Amazon .
Where To Buy From?
We recommend to buy The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World (Vintage) from Amazon as it consistently provides the best price. Ready? Click here for ordering instructions.
More Reviews
If you want to read more The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World (Vintage) reviews by real users ,the best place for reviews from people who actually use the product is Amazon. Click here to read more consumer reviews on Amazon.
|
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
 It’s Hard To Build Without Destroying, By
This review is from: The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today (Hardcover)
We love roads, and we come to hate them. “Anyone,” writes Conover in his opening paragraph, “who has benefited from a better road–a shorter route, a smoother and safer drive–can testify to the importance of good roads. But when humans strive, we also err, and it is hard to build without destroying.” That contradiction, that tension underlies the book. A road from Peru’s Altiplano into the jungle allows access to valuable mahogany trees, but also threatens primitive people and an established ecology. In East Africa, a road that is a clear economic boon to many has also helped the spread of AIDS, via truckers and prostitutes along its length. Roads are integral to development, and development can look disastrous. There is nothing armchair about Conover’s reporting. He clearly has a library and has read widely, but each of the six chapters is written from inside a culture, whether the author is zipping along the new highways of China or riding inside an ambulance through the teeming, chaotic city of Lagos, Nigeria. It’s a book full of people, and the conflicts are inevitable. Why, a friend asks the author, would he go to Lagos, a city which Conover admits has “few museums, not too many antiquities, only a handful of public spaces or buildings of note, and stunningly little natural beauty. It does, however, have a reputation for crime, and lots of lots of people.” Because people are interesting, Conover says, and “So is crime.” So are the politics of Israel and Palestine–and the chapter on the roads of the West Bank is the best piece of journalism I’ve ever read about that conflict. Conover explores the Israeli checkpoints in the company of both Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers who try to control them. It’s degrading to both sides. The soldiers are looking for guns, explosives and suicide bombers, and most Palestinians are simply trying to get to work, or get home. Israel’s management of the West Bank often comes down to restricting the travel of the Palestinians, and when Conover is in line with them as they move on foot toward a pair of turnstiles, “an exercise in gradual compression,” the reader gets a visceral feel for their frustration and humiliation. The soldiers don’t like it either. “Innocent civilians…are inevitably damaged by the army’s work in the territories,” Conover writes. He spends weeks with an Israeli commander and his men, who not only run the checkpoints but sometimes tear up Palestinian houses in search of arms. It’s bad for the families, the commander says, “But what’s not plain until the fifteenth time is that it’s bad for you.” Six fascinating travels interspersed with engaging personal essays: a great book.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Ideal Travel Companion, By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today (Hardcover)
Ted Conover is the ideal travel companion. He seems equally comfortable standing in a swanky apartment in the Upper East Side, and tramping through the rain forest of Peru. In this book he takes us to places we’d otherwise never see: One day we’re riding a mahogany raft down the Mother of God River in Peru, another day we’re being herded through a dusty check-point in Ramallah. We get to know people we’d never otherwise meet: an African truck driver, teenagers from a remote Himalayan village, and an ambulance crew in Lagos, Nigeria. Roads connect these people. So does Conover’s unerring eye for detail, and his pitch-perfect ear for language. This book is more than just an adventure: it’s an invitation to understand each other and to know the world in which we live.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Well written and thought provoking, By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today (Hardcover)
I downloaded this to my Kindle after reading a positive review in The New Yorker. Highly recommended. |
Related Travel Products
It’s Hard To Build Without Destroying,
We love roads, and we come to hate them. “Anyone,” writes Conover in his opening paragraph, “who has benefited from a better road–a shorter route, a smoother and safer drive–can testify to the importance of good roads. But when humans strive, we also err, and it is hard to build without destroying.”
That contradiction, that tension underlies the book. A road from Peru’s Altiplano into the jungle allows access to valuable mahogany trees, but also threatens primitive people and an established ecology. In East Africa, a road that is a clear economic boon to many has also helped the spread of AIDS, via truckers and prostitutes along its length. Roads are integral to development, and development can look disastrous.
There is nothing armchair about Conover’s reporting. He clearly has a library and has read widely, but each of the six chapters is written from inside a culture, whether the author is zipping along the new highways of China or riding inside an ambulance through the teeming, chaotic city of Lagos, Nigeria. It’s a book full of people, and the conflicts are inevitable. Why, a friend asks the author, would he go to Lagos, a city which Conover admits has “few museums, not too many antiquities, only a handful of public spaces or buildings of note, and stunningly little natural beauty. It does, however, have a reputation for crime, and lots of lots of people.” Because people are interesting, Conover says, and “So is crime.”
So are the politics of Israel and Palestine–and the chapter on the roads of the West Bank is the best piece of journalism I’ve ever read about that conflict. Conover explores the Israeli checkpoints in the company of both Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers who try to control them. It’s degrading to both sides. The soldiers are looking for guns, explosives and suicide bombers, and most Palestinians are simply trying to get to work, or get home. Israel’s management of the West Bank often comes down to restricting the travel of the Palestinians, and when Conover is in line with them as they move on foot toward a pair of turnstiles, “an exercise in gradual compression,” the reader gets a visceral feel for their frustration and humiliation.
The soldiers don’t like it either. “Innocent civilians…are inevitably damaged by the army’s work in the territories,” Conover writes. He spends weeks with an Israeli commander and his men, who not only run the checkpoints but sometimes tear up Palestinian houses in search of arms. It’s bad for the families, the commander says, “But what’s not plain until the fifteenth time is that it’s bad for you.”
Six fascinating travels interspersed with engaging personal essays: a great book.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Ideal Travel Companion,
Ted Conover is the ideal travel companion. He seems equally comfortable standing in a swanky apartment in the Upper East Side, and tramping through the rain forest of Peru. In this book he takes us to places we’d otherwise never see: One day we’re riding a mahogany raft down the Mother of God River in Peru, another day we’re being herded through a dusty check-point in Ramallah. We get to know people we’d never otherwise meet: an African truck driver, teenagers from a remote Himalayan village, and an ambulance crew in Lagos, Nigeria. Roads connect these people. So does Conover’s unerring eye for detail, and his pitch-perfect ear for language. This book is more than just an adventure: it’s an invitation to understand each other and to know the world in which we live.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Well written and thought provoking,
I downloaded this to my Kindle after reading a positive review in The New Yorker.
Each of the pieces in this book have a different feel, all presented a different view on a subject I had read about many times before – the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, the spread of AIDS and corruption in Africa, the emerging middle-class in China, the interminable violence on the West Bank and so on, but these stories give a much more intimate, personal feel to those stories, an opportunity to feel it up close – to give you a sense of personal experience.
The piece on the West Bank is one of the best pieces of reporting I have read in years.
Highly recommended.
Was this review helpful to you?
|