The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today

Using widely selected specific examples, Conover deftly weaves stories that illustrate the universal in the particular; inspires me to look at his earlier works.

Very interesting and comprehesive.

Ted Conover must be an amazing dinner companion. Hes managed to write an entire book about fascinating adventures without once bragging about how adventurous he is. The modest tone aside, this is a really neat book. I heard of it shortly after a heated discussion with a friend about the pros and cons of development, including roads, in the developing world. Through visits to several very different places, Mr. Conover addresses many of the questions Ive been pondering: the loss of ancient culture vs. the arrival of modern advantages... the spread of disease vs. the ability to treat it... the inevitability(?) of inequality vs. the chance to raise the standard of living of a whole population. The book is essentially a travelogue, full of first-person impressions and the voices of people Mr. Conover met on his journeys. But its also illuminated and deepened by secondary research and, thanks to the authors willingness to acknowledge his own biases and speculations, one of the most balanced pieces of non-fiction writing Ive read in a long time. (BTW, I agree w/the critics at Bookmarks Magazine--the subtitles a little misleading. It kind of makes it sound like this will be an academic treatise on global interconnectedness, and so I had certain expectations for this book that werent met. But actually, that turned out to be a good thing. It was _better_ than I expected it to be!)

Very interesting and varied travelogue as travelogues go. The author should be commended for his selection of roads around the world and his accounts of how he traveled them. I only wish he would have included the road between Brownsville Texas and Guatemala through Vera Cruz with its hundreds of caravans of Central Americans transporting used pickup trucks and appliances back to their hometowns. As the author points out, roads are much more than a way of getting from one point to another. They lower the cost for farmers of getting their produce to markets. They facilitate access by isolated populations to enhanced life improving services. And then there is the negative - oil well and mining penetration roads almost always promote deforestation and as the author points out, the spread of vices and diseases such as HIV.

Fascinating way of looking at the world. A unique way into cultures. Well written and not like any other book I can think of.

Ted Conover is right about one thing, the emergence of roads in places where they previously does not exist is changing our global environment, both natural and business. What he does not do is take a stand on whether or not this is a good thing, bad thing or a mixed blessing. We are given a smattering of anecdotes regarding how roads are impacting places around the globe where they previously had no impact. We are not told if this is really anything good, bad or other wise. For example, he tells us the story of mahogany export in the jungles of Peru. We hear a very detailed blow by blow description of the trip but no real description of how the road is impacting or bettering the world. The same holds true for the descriptions of roads in China and India. They all have colorful stories but dont really give any solid examples or prove a theme. All in all it is a weak work because it tries to tell several stories but ends up telling none.

His previous work was outstanding and I wish that was the case here. Instead we have an author ‘mailing’ it in on the fame of a previous novel

My praise to Ted for his clear sentences and yet descriptive writing that gives one a feeling and vision of the journey. I like his writing enough that I will seek his other books. My son is a biologist, my science minor in preparation of my teaching degree and my age (72) give me some background to what is being said throughtout the book. I am not yet finished and I am recommending the book to my friends. the findings and the Title have the main theme of these routes of our world. The research and actual adventures make for the perfect view of the particular route being described. The stories are like short stories gathered in one book so this is a good read for me. My husband has had Parkinsons for 18 years and I do not find time to read as I used to. I am his caregiver --we try to do things together most of the time. Whatever your age or life --I feel this book is a MUST READ!

With keen-eyed Ted Conover as your guide, Routes of Man offers up the best kind of non-fiction writing: the ride-along. The journey might be in a bus, in the back of an ambulance or in a Nigerian danfo (shared minivan), but for 302 fascinating pages you get to hear, taste, smell and sense Peru, India, Kenya, Israel, China and Nigeria. The idea of looking at how roads change cultures and alter civilization is brilliant. The execution is just as nifty. If youre not familiar with the Conover style, you should be. His is the kind of effortless writing, reporting and anthropology that glides along. You breathe in moments by his side. In Newjack, we spent a year with Conover as a Sing-Sing prison guard. In Coyotes, we travelled with immigrants north from Mexico to the southwestern United States. In Rolling Nowhere, we rode the rails with hoboes across the country. In Routes, the utter humanity continues to shine through --the people we meet along the way. Before we know it, were drinking tea in simple huts in the Himalayas, we are paddling up river toward remote mahogany camps in the Amazon, and we are bombing around the countryside with Chinese businessmen who crave the speed, power and freedom that only a car ride can offer. Each of the journeys is interspersed with mini-essays about roads and their meaning, impact and importance; these form a kind of glue to the global adventures. What kick-starts the travels is Conovers open spirit. He minimizes reporting on the work it takes to set up these stories (one can only imagine) and jumps straight to the moment so we can spend more time inside the cultures being impacted by the encroachment from the routes of man. While the style is first-person, Conover slips in and out of the stories with ease, always shining the spotlight on his subjects first. The stories are at turns harrowing, funny, heartfelt, touching, terrifying (reckless speeding in China) or just plain tense (area boys in Lagos getting ready to attack your shared ride). Conover de-constructs border crossings in the maze around the West Bank, checks on the changes in how AIDS is perceived along truck routes in Africa, and takes us down a road that is for the time being a frozen (part of the year) remote Indian river. The writing is uniformly rich and detailed, whether Conover is writing about the roads and the vehicles or the communities they lead to: The village was an intriguing medieval warren of mud-brick houses three and four stories high, some whitewashed, uneven and irregular. Roofs were flat and often piled high with hay and the dried animal dung that fueled stoves; tattered strings of prayer flags fluttered over many. The ground level was devoted to animals: sheltered spaces where goats and oxen and dzos (a yak-cow mix) could spend the winter. Every day they were walked to water. Not all the houses were stand-alone; many adjoined others, sharing walls (and probably some heat). There was no electricity except for a few small solar-powered, fluorescent fixtures distributed by the government. Go for a ride with Ted Conover and ponder changes wrought by the ever-increasing tentacles of intrusion--the changes that are roads (of all sorts).

There is no cover page or table of contents in the kindle version (there are both of these in the hard copy) so I cant easily move back to the notes or bibliography while Im reading. The maps are nearly illegible except when I get out a magnifying glass. this book needs to be read in hard copy.