Hip to the Trip: A Cultural History of Route 66 [Paperback]

As an indefatigable traveler and inveterate road-tripper who has visited every state in America, I do everything possible to avoid chain motels, chain restaurants and chain tourist attractions. I say proudly that I have not eaten at a McDonalds or Burger King in many years, and that most of the miles that I drive in rental cars during vacations are on interesting back roads, not on Interstate highways. Route 66, formerly the nation's major highway between Chicago and Los Angeles, has always held a special fascination for me. Even though I have not yet driven most of the remaining sections of the "Mother Road," an extended drive on as much of it as I can manage is high on my "To Do" list.

When I make that drive, Peter B. Dedek's "Hip to the Trip: A Cultural History of Route 66," will have done a lot to prepare me for it. His book is not a travelogue. Nor is it a photo chronicle. It is exactly what it says it is--a cultural history. At a short 131 pages, "Hip to the Trip" is scholarly in tone, comprehensive in content, and includes well-chosen photographs, a color plate section, 20 pages of detailed notes and a useful nine-page bibliography. Despite its academic mien, it is interesting and accessible, and should be a valuable resource if you're looking for something deeper than a book filled with pretty pictures.

I found Dr. Dedek's analysis of stereotyping in the marketing of Route 66, long before the time of the Interstate highway system, to be especially interesting. Much of this aimed to attract tourists from the East, and to reinforce their romantic notions of wild, wild West culture that they had gained from Hollywood movies. The reality was very different. For example, business promoters in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona shamelessly hyped the image of the cowboy as a drawling Anglo Saxon hero, despite the fact that one-third of real cowboys on cattle drives in the days of the "Old West" were black or Mexican. Similarly, Native Americans, who were barred from entering the faux adobe trading posts around which they danced for the tourists and sold souvenir trinkets, were idealized as "noble savages," uncorrupted by Western civilization.

Dr. Dedek shows how today's nostalgia for simpler times, as epitomized by the idea of Route 66 as the iconic "Main Street of America," is really a case of selective memory. After you read "Hip to the Trip," you'll realize that the "good old days," on which you may look back with fond memories, were probably not, in reality, what you thought they were. It's a fascinating, insightful and thought-provoking read.

Being interested in the history of automotive transportation and intrigued by the colorful and well-designed cover of this book, I was not disappointed when I read it. It is a well-thoughtout and fascinating story of one of the most well-known highways in U.S. history. I think that the postcards and author's photographs, illustrating parts of this highway and structures along it, also contribute greatly to an understanding of Route 66, both past and present.

I truly wanted to like this book when I started to read. The first few chapters gave me plenty of reasons to like it. But in Chapter 4, the narrative went sideways and took a sharp turn to the political left.
The author appears to enjoy sneering at those of us who still hold a somewhat idyllic nostalgia for the 1950s and the old road. He apparently thinks that middle class, white, male-dominated America should be doing penance for all the racial and social injustice of the past that was perpetrated on the nation and the old road. In doing so, the narrative turns into just another example of Howard Zinn type deconstructionist history, taking a proctologist's view of America and beating us up over its flaws.

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