American Trip

How historical, social, and cultural forces shaped the psychedelic experience in midcentury America, from CIA experiments with LSD to Timothy Leary's Harvard Psilocybin Project. Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one's private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in all these incarnations, often arriving at contradictory results. In American Trip, Ido Hartogsohn examines how the psychedelic experience in midcentury America was shaped by historical, social, and cultural forces--by set (the mindset of the user) and setting (the environments in which the experience takes place).

A heartwrenching YA coming of age story about three siblings on a roadtrip in search of healing. With a strong family, the best friend a guy could ask for, and a budding romance with the girl of his dreams, life shows promise for Teodoro “T” Avila. But he takes some hard hits the summer before senior year when his nearly perfect brother, Manny, returns from a tour in Iraq with a devastating case of PTSD. In a desperate effort to save Manny from himself and pull their family back together, T’s fiery sister, Xochitl, hoodwinks her brothers into a cathartic road trip. Told through T’s honest voice, this is a candid exploration of mental illness, socioeconomic pressures, and the many inescapable highs and lows that come with growing up—including falling in love. Christy Ottaviano Books

Americans love road trips. They love to go on road trips. They love to read about road trips. They love to watch road trip stories unfold on television and film. Road trip stories are a consistent feature of the American landscape, a central part of American mythology, and an important piece of the American dream. In The American Road Trip and American Political Thought, Susan McWilliams argues that the American fascination with road trip stories is about more than mere escapism or wanderlust. She shows, in walking through stories like On the Road and The Grapes of Wrath, that American road trip stories are a key expression of American political thought. They are not just stories of personal journeys. They are stories of the American nation. McWilliams Barndt shows how Americans have long used road trip stories to raise and explore central questions about American politics in theory and practice. They talk about freedom and equality and diversity and take those vaunted American ideals for a test drive. American road trip stories are where the rubber meets the road in American political thought. The American Road Trip and American Political Thought includes explorations of a wide variety of American authors, from Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau to Erika Lopez and Cheryl Strayed, from Mark Twain and John Steinbeck to Solomon Northup and Hunter S. Thompson. It covers topics including gender, labor, place, race, and technology in American political life. This is a book that will change the way you think about the great American road trip and the great American story.

In 1935, well into the era of Soviet communism, Russian satirical writers Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov came to the U.S as special correspondents for the Russian newspaper Pravda. They drove cross-country and back on a ten-week trip, recording images of American life through humerous texts and the lens of a Leica camera. When they returned home, they published their work in Ogonek, the Soviet equivalent of Time magazine, and later in the book Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (Single-Storied America). This wonderful lost workfilled with wry observations, biting opinions, and telling photographsis now collected in Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip, the first English translation. From Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: "The word 'America' has well-developed grandiose associations for a Soviet person, for whom it refers to a country of skyscrapers, where day and night one hears the unceasing thunder of surface and underground trains, the hellish roar of automobile horns, and the continuous despairing screams of stockbrokers rushing through the skyscrapers waving their ever-falling shares. We want to change that image." A Cabinet Book published by Princeton Architectural Press

This book offers a lively and entertaining read for world- and armchair travelers alike. Consider such roadside treasures as the Cabazon Dinosaurs, Lucy the Elephant, Igloo City, and the world's largest killer bee. You just have to see them. If you're planning a fun trip on the open road, read this first . . . or better yet, bring it along. There are plenty of colorful (and weird) places that you wouldn't want to miss. Gorgeous photography and tongue-in-cheek text will steer you to some of the most garish, inelegant, and unbelievable sights in the United States!

This book is a travelog to the Southern states of the United States. The author is a New Yorker, and visited the following places, amongst others: Baltimore, Charlottesville, Richmond (Virginia); Atlanta (Georgia); Memphis (Mississippi); and Florida.

When your life plan explodes, you ask yourself the big questions: What do I really need in life? How can I make my life a work of art? Should I buy a house? Have kids? What is a life? Following in Kerouac and Steinbeck's tire tracks, a 32-year-old, post-breakup Brendan Leonard hits the road in search of healing and a new, post-economic-downturn American Dream. Sleeping in the back of a beat-up station wagon, he seeks answers-and hopefully, the occasional shower-in the postcard-worthy places of the American West. Part ballad to the romance of the road and part heart-searching treatise on the American Dream, The New American Road Trip Mixtape is Leonard's raw, often hilarious, barstool storytelling at its best.