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

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!

Second book Ive read from this author, 1st Coyotes, I liked, this was a hard read and with few exceptions not enjoyable.

I picked up this book after reading a review in, I think, the Economist. This is a wonderful book and well written. Roads are the unifying theme and Conover retells the varied ancounters which he had travelling far flung places. What makes this book outstanding is not only the writing and the experience but that Conover manages to be humble and to appreciate all the people whom he meets. Even though he travels far and wide, he never comes over as the self centered adventurer. he retains a quiet, held back tone, describing trips with car clubs in China, travels with illegal loggers in Peru or the experience of Palestinians in their homeland with compassion, interest and without passing judgement. Roads, like Megacities, are destined to be the future of humankind and he captures this very well. He also captures the attraction of the road excellently. The only misgiving which I have is that this is basically a collection of excellently written travelogues and description, but he fails at really coming up with an overarching theme or narrative. It never becomes clear why he actaully chose those places and how he really puts them into a larger context.

The subject is huge (roads, the biggest thing people have built) but the approach is specific, even intimate: Conover gets at the big story by telling smaller stories, and puts you right there-in the Hyundai, in the Humvee, in the Himalayan winter. Its an adventure story but its not macho, its human.

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).

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

As a highway engineer, specializing in traffic operations, my incentive for reading this book was to see roads from a different perspective. I picked the book up at a public signing by the author and had the chance to hear him speak about his experiences. I find it interesting to read about cultures that are decades behind the states when it comes to sprawl and mobility; that are envious of the glorified benefits of the mobility that we have enjoyed for decades, while ignoring the socio-economic consequences. You want to travel with Mr. Conover and look his companions in the eye and ask if they really know what they are getting themselves into. Overall, a good read.