Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (The Road and American Culture)

Book Description

Eating on the run has a long history in America, but it was the automobile that created a whole new category of dining: "fast food." In the final volume of their "Gas, Food, Lodging" trilogy, John Jakle and Keith Sculle contemplate the origins, architecture, and commercial growth of fast food restaurants from White Castle to McDonald's.

Illustrated with 217 maps, postcards, photographs, and drawings, Fast Food makes clear that the story of these unpretentious restaurants is the story of modern American culture. The first roadside eateries popularized once-unfamiliar foods -- hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, milkshakes, burritos -- that are now basic to the American diet. By the 1950s, drive-ins and diners had become icons of rebellion where teenagers sought freedom from adult authority. Like the gas station and the motel, the roadside restaurant is an essential part of the modern American landscape -- where intentional sameness of design "welcomes" every interstate driver.

Customer Reviews:

As dry as a fast food hamburger.......2001-03-04

This could best be described as a detailed history of chain-restaurants (not just fast food). It opens with a history of 'quick-service' eating establishments in the US, taking the reader through the history of tea rooms, roadside stands, diners, and other more recent permutations. Most of the book is devoted to histories of chain-restaurant companies, which amount to something less than riveting reading. The authors have thoroughly researched the history of every restaurant chain in painstaking detail, but rarely are these written in a way that makes for a gripping story. An exception is the Indiana-based 'Snappy Service' chain (closed in 1983), which is described in a way that brings its entrepreneur to life. The last chapter describes the pattern of chain restaurants that evolved in Springfield, Illinois. The book is profusely illustrated with well over a hundred photos and dozens of maps. One glaring error appears in a series of five maps (pp. 154-157) analyzing McDonald's domination of rival chains, in which the ratio of McDonald's to competitors was inverted.

An Easy Read.......2000-07-14

I liked it so much I brought a copy for a friend of mine. It tells you EVERYTHING you could ever want to know anout fast food in America.

The book will provide you with more fast food trivia than even the nerdiest person in the world would ever want to hear.

A great coffee table book.

Authoritative, but not light reading.......2000-05-12

I enjoyed this book much more than the previous reviewer, but he has a point. FAST FOOD, like the other titles in the "Road and American Culture" series, should not be confused with the typical book on "roadside Americana": it's not a lighthearted, heavily illustrated volume designed to evoke nostalgic memories. If that's what you want, search for titles written by John Margolies or Michael Karl Witzel, or published by Chronicle Books.

This is a serious examination of casual dining in America, from the lunch wagons which once served urban laborers through the chains which now cluster near every exit along the Interstate. Taken on its own terms, the book is a success, assembling more information (well-annotated, with an excellent bibliography) than any previous title on the topic. Just be sure you know what you're getting into!

unreadable.......2000-02-06

What could be more entertaining than a book about fast-food? What could be more fun than reading the history of Wendy's and Long john Silver, of hamburgers and hotdogs? Unfortunately the writers of 'Fast food' have a very bad case of sociologist's jargon. Most of the book is as exciting and as readable as a management study and many a paragraph goes beyond the comprehension of this reader, even though he graduated in literature. Moreover the writers do not bother to hide their cultured disdain for the food they write about. So notwithstanding the many interesting facts and observations in this book, in the end there is very little to enjoy.

Cool Cars, High Art: The Rise of Kustom Kulture

Average customer rating:

Good book with less photos than you might expect
Kulture Kids
Street Rodder Hall of Fame Pick
Blue Collar Art on Parnassus

Cool Cars, High Art: The Rise of Kustom Kulture
John Dewitt
Manufacturer: University Press of Mississippi
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1578064031

Customer Reviews:

Good book with less photos than you might expect.......2007-02-28

I really like this book, although I would like to see a lot more photos of cars in a book that focuses on the aesthetic qualities of custom cars. The author successfully argues that kustoms are an art form and then proceeds to analyze various styles of custom cars in relationship to various styles of high art. Good stuff! As for the photos, the most refreshing thing about them is that they are not the same dozen famous kustoms that you've already seen in every other book about custom cars.

Kulture Kids.......2006-03-06

An exhaustive (and exhausting) cross between a fan-rave and a dissertation examining the history and pop-ological intricacies of the brief but very influential rod-and-custom period in America.

Although it is chock full of details and insights into the subject one wonders who exactly it was written for. It often seems much too highbrow and academic for the average kid or gear-head, and I'm sure most academes wouldn't be seen reading anything with so many "purdy pichures". You're left with the impression that it in fact began as a scholarly defense (always check who the publisher is) which, once it appeared to have legs, was tricked out with some chrome and kandy kolors to help find it's way onto American coffee tables.

Still it is well worth having to glean ( for practiced speed readers ) ever more minutia about an era that always spawns endless nostalgia for fans, and eventually, a true sociological and anthropological exegesis for 22 century rustmites.

Street Rodder Hall of Fame Pick.......2002-04-27

Just want to let everybody know that Jerry Weesner of Streetrodder (June 2002) picked Cool Cars, High Art as a Hall of Fame selection with only three other books on the art of customizing.

Blue Collar Art on Parnassus.......2002-04-24

This handsome book is an unusual treatment of its subject for sure. There is a bevy of color photographs to satisfy the aficionado--and to make it an ideal gift for any car-crazy friend. But what I find most striking is the author¹s truly unique take on the car as an art object. Obviously comfortable with the demands of current theoretical discourse, he seems purposefully to prove that the obscurantism that bedevils so much academic prose today is merely self-indulgent. He has helped me grasp much more than just the beauty of the customized car. Readers (and especially teachers in a number of disciplines) will appreciate Prof. DeWitt¹s cunning explications of a Williams poem, a Picasso collage, a Futurist sculpture, and a surprising number of movies and TV shows to support his insights into our car culture.

Customized: Art Inspired by Hot Rods, Low Riders, and American Car Culture

Average customer rating:

Customized: Art Inspired by Hot Rods, Low Riders, and American Car Culture
C. Brenda Jo , and Chavoya Bright
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B0006GRGF0

Book Description

Sleek and slick and fast, hot rods with their souped-up engines and coolly restyled chassis have fired the imaginations of the youth who customize and drive them-and the artists who glorify them. Fantastically painted cars, as well as photographs and art works in other mediums inspired by America's love affair with custom cars, are the subject of this exciting new book, created to accompany an exhibition at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Von Dutch, Robert Williams, Richard Prince, and Rubn Ortiz Torres are among the contemporary artists who embrace hot rods not just as a means of transportation, but also as shrines to a way of life. Challenging the stereotype that American car culture is the exclusive domain of white males, curator Nora Donnelly highlights the work of women artists Sylvie Fleury and Fiona Banner and the predominantly Latino low riders. With its fabulous images and lively design, here is a book with all the sexy panache of its subject.

BRENDA JO BRIGHT is a professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. C. ONDINE CHAVOYA is a Tufts University professor of critical studies at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts. NORA DONNELLY is curator of this exhibition and is assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. ROYAL FORD is an automotive journalist at the Boston Globe. PAT GANAHL is editor of Hot Rodder's Journal. LEAH KERR is a published author. DALE PECK is a critically acclaimed novelist. RUBN ORTIZ TORRES is a visual artist.

Book Description

Put on your chinos, comb back your hair, hop in your deuce coupe, crank up the radio, and prepare to cruise! This light-hearted look back at the social and cultural activity spawned by the automobile is filled with historical photographs, new color photos and specially commissioned artwork by artist Kent Bash. A lively text examines all aspects of this popular pasttime, including classic cruising venues like Detroits Woodward Avenue, street racing, cruisers versus the law, popular music, cinema and television.

Customer Reviews:

Cruisin' is time trip back to yesterday's two-lane strip!.......2000-05-26

If remember the days when you used to hang out at the drive-in and spend most of your free time at the wheel of your convertible (and some nights in the back seat), Cruisin' is definitely the book for you. This book has it all--it's a real flashback to a time that had no equal, an era of cars and freedom that will never be again. The Bash images and Witzel photos are way cool and really send you back in time. Whether it's hot rods, muscle cars, and the many places and pastimes we indulged ourselves with, this book is the definitive scrapbook of America's car culture heyday! If you love cars and enjoy the trip more than the place you are goin' to, you 'gotta get this book!

I LOVE THIS BOOK.......1998-06-16

FOR ALL HOT ROD AND CRUSIN ENTHUSIASTS, THIS BOOK IS A MUST. GREAT MEMORIES!!!!

I LOVE THIS BOOK.......1998-06-16

FOR ALL HOT ROD AND CRUSIN ENTHUSIASTS, THIS BOOK IS A MUST. GREAT MEMORIES!!!!

Driving Women: Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth-Century America

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Driving Women: Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth-Century America
Deborah Clarke
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0801886171

Book Description

Over the years, cars have helped to define the experiences and self-perceptions of women in complex and sometimes unexpected ways. When women take the wheel, family structure and public space are reconfigured and re-gendered, creating a context for a literary tradition in which the car has served as a substitute for, an escape from, and an extension of the home, as well as a surrogate mother, a financial safeguard, and a means of self-expression.

Driving Women examines the intersection of American fiction -- primarily but not exclusively by women -- and automobile culture. Deborah Clarke argues that issues critical to twentieth-century American society -- technology, mobility, domesticity, and agency -- are repeatedly articulated through women's relationships with cars. Women writers took surprisingly intense interest in car culture and its import for modern life, as the car, replete with material and symbolic meaning, recast literal and literary female power in the automotive age.

Clarke draws on a wide range of literary works, both canonical and popular, to document women's fascination with cars from many perspectives: historical, psychological, economic, ethnic. Authors discussed include Wharton, Stein, Faulkner, O'Connor, Morrison, Erdrich, Mason, Kingsolver, Lopez, Kadohata, Smiley, Senna, Viramontes, Allison, and Silko. By investigating how cars can function as female space, reflect female identity, and reshape female agency, this engaging study opens up new angles from which to approach fiction by and about women and traces new directions in the intersection of literature, technology, and gender.

Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape (Cultural Spaces)

Average customer rating:

An intriguing, original, seminal history of travel routes

Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape (Cultural Spaces)
Catherine Gudis
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415934559

Book Description

The highway has become the buyway. Along the millions of miles the public travels, advertisers spend billions on images of cola, cars, vodka, fast food, and swimming pools that blur past us, catching our fleeting attention and turning the landscape into a corridor of commerce.
A smart, succinct, and visually compelling history of the billboard in America, Buyways traces how the outdoor advertising industry changed the face of American commercialism. Taking us from itinerant bill-stickers of circus posters in the 19th century to the blinking, beeping, 3-D eyesores of today, Gudis argues that roadside advertising has turned the landscape itself into a commodity to be bought and sold as advertising space.
Buyways vividly chronicles the battles between environmentalists and businessmen as well as the response of artists, from New Deal photographers who satirized the billboard-infested landscape to commercial artists who embraced the kitsch of it all. It also shows how advertisers tapped into the American mythology of the open road, promoting mobile consumption as the American Dream on four wheels.
Entertaining and brilliantly illustrated, Buyways is a vibrant road map of the new geography of consumption. Also includes an eight page color insert.

Customer Reviews:

An intriguing, original, seminal history of travel routes.......2004-07-09

Catherine Gudis' Buyways is a unique and intrinsically fascinating history of the advertising billboard industry in America. Of immense value for the academic study of American business history, Buyways is also highly recommended reding for travelers and non-specialist general readers interested in wayside advertising and highway history. From legal battles between environmentalists and business interests, to the involvement of artists and behvioral scientists in billboard presentation and design, Buyways provides an intriguing, original, seminal history of travel routes and advertising format choices.

Fifties American Cars (Enthusiast Color)

Average customer rating:

none
Great pictures of classic american cars!

Fifties American Cars (Enthusiast Color)
Mike Mueller
Manufacturer: Motorbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0879389249

Book Description

Return to the days of poodle skirts and hula hoops in this nostalgic color trip back to the fabulous fifties! Side-by-side comparisons of the 1950s most significant automobiles, plus plenty of period advertising bring back fond memories of those great fins and fenders. Great American cars, from Crosleys to Cadillacs, await you in this classic color collection.

Customer Reviews:

none.......2007-01-12

I was very disappointed in this book...there just was not much there!
I wish I had just ordered 2 of the previous purchase!

Great pictures of classic american cars!.......2000-12-28

If you want to read about and see some of the best american cars ever made, than you want this book! With detailed discriptions and great full color pictures, this book is a must-have for any car enthusiest.

Average customer rating:

The Automobile and American Culture

Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Automobile Age

ASIN: 047208044X

Book Description

Looks at the impact of the automobile on American folkways

Roadside America: The Automobile and the American Dream

Average customer rating:

wow
Exciting Mix Of Automobile History & Premium Photography
The Open Road Comes Alive
Worthwhile time-travel guide; review exerpt from lacar.com
Roadside A Winner

Roadside America: The Automobile and the American Dream
Lucind Lewis
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810944340

Book Description

A paean to American ingenuity and craftsmanship, this new book is both the most complete survey available of 20th-century American cars and a glorious, nostalgic photographic portrait of the icons of roadside America. Lucinda Lewis has created a breathtaking armchair spin through America's fabulous and fast-fading roadside culture.

Lewis's evocative tribute takes us deep into the heart of 20th-century American history and folklore. With quotes from those who traveled our fabled highways, she vividly portrays, along with the great American cars, the neon-drenched diners, drive-in movie theaters, and last-chance gas stations that once peppered our landscape, as well as the mesmerizing attractions of Route 66, the Mother Road made famous by Steinbeck and Kerouac. Many of these, sadly, no longer exist, but fortunately Lucinda Lewis's camera has preserved them forever.

LUCINDA LEWIS is one of the world's premier automotive photographers; her work appears regularly in numerous publications. She and her husband live in Los Angeles, California.

230 photographs, 185 in full color, 93/4 x 12"

Customer Reviews:

wow.......2007-09-20

this may be one of my favorite automobile/landscape books of all time. its just beautiful. the pictures of vintage cars and famous vintage sites is worth any price. dont think about it, buy it while you still can.

Exciting Mix Of Automobile History & Premium Photography.......2000-12-18

When it comes to the love of automobiles, my hub is somewhat of a road warrior. So, when he purchased this book, I must admit I feigned polite interest. After thumbing through pages of classy, glossy dream vehicles--- I was hooked. This was no ordinary book on cars. This was eye candy with all pedals to the metal.

Photographer Lewis relates that ad agencies would urge her to shoot cars in studio setups. But she always preferred to go on location to wait until the dawn sky "radiated a glow that rolls like warm caramel across a car's sheet metal."

That glow rolls through the pages of this sumptuous photographic history of the American motor car. The book starts with the Model T (costing $850 in 1908) and Henry Ford's vow to "build a car for the great multitude." It picks up speed in the '20s with the birth of the U.S. highway and cruises to our current national love affair with SUVs, "two-ton behemoths that swill fuel like hogs at the trough."

The automobiles themselves will be treat enough for car nuts. For the rest of us there is Lewis's affection for Americana. She shoots a '35 Ford pickup, black with red-rimmed wheels, against the bleakness of Two Guns, Ariz.; a ruby red '59 Cadillac Eldorado convertible in the glitter gulch of Fremont Street in Vegas; and a muscle-car legend, the '64 Pontiac GTO, beneath a towering doughnut sign in L.A.

A great gift for car loving guys & gals on Valentine's Day or any day. Warning: The rumble of the road will be calling you!

The Open Road Comes Alive.......2000-11-20

Lewis captures the epic wonder, strange beauty, and raucous vitality of the American road. Her eye is attracted to the things we often notice, but seldom observe. The text is excellent, offering actual experiences of those who journeyed along these fabled highways in the past. The color photography is mouth-watering and extremely vivid (the neon practically jumps from the page), but the black and white photos are especially haunting. They explore some of the same terrain immortalized by photographers such as Robert Frank and Dorothea Lange. All in all, a splendid book.

Worthwhile time-travel guide; review exerpt from lacar.com.......2000-11-18

...Arranged in chronological order, the seven chapters take us from 1895 through 1999. The pictorial focus is on American iron, largely from the '50s and '60s. Lewis' narration accompanies in a casual tone with dry humor and interesting historical anecdotes, allowing the reader to mentally complete the cross-country journey with ease. I found myself reliving the multiple coast to coast excursions I took in the 1970s and felt the seeds of yet another trip being planted.

...Roadside America is a long-term book. Lucinda Lewis has lovingly recorded historic cars in historic settings with such visual detail that it is impossible to take them all in at one viewing. You will come back time and again. This book evokes all the romance and sense of adventure that early automotive culture has come to mean. Whether you are a fan of beautiful old cars, traveling Americana, automotive culture, or dramatic professional photography of all of the above, Roadside America, The Automobile and the American Dream is for you.

Roadside A Winner.......2000-10-04

I was wowed by this book. I've seen vintage car books before, but this one is different. First, the photography is a notch above the best I've seen. Lucinda Lewis is a true artist with the camera. Second, this is no ordinary chronicle of automotive history. Instead, the author takes the reader on an imaginary journey across America, much of it on historic Route 66, where each car is photographed (beautifully) in a period setting appropriate for the vehicle. The author loves cars and loves photography, and her passion comes through in the book. Much of the text of the book is about the "roadside experience" and the development of auto travel in America rather than detailed technical descriptions of the vintage cars. Because of that, this is a book you can enjoy as a good read while being dazzled by some astounding photography.

The Distance to the Moon: A Road Trip into the American Dream

Average customer rating:

no matter where you go there you are
Better than I thought
A Roadtrip into Middle-Aged Hornliness
Fussing and Fretting Across the USA
A car buff shares his love of the Boxster

The Distance to the Moon: A Road Trip into the American Dream
James Morgan
Manufacturer: Riverhead Hardcover
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 157322135X

Amazon.com

In his early 50s, James Morgan yields to a restless urge and hits the road in a fast car. In The Distance to the Moon (a title owing to the speculations of John Updike, who wrote that every 17 years, the average American male drives the distance to the moon), Morgan takes the reader from Miami to California via America's fast lane of dreams, into what he calls a love story, where "the affair is between us and our automobiles." The vehicle? A new silver Boxster on loan from Porsche, of course. The envious crowds soon form, and throughout the journey, Morgan wrestles with his new identity--going from a "two-van man" to a driver who regularly gets the approving thumbs-up.

Morgan's story is well-researched and intelligent, as well as introspective. He sets himself knowingly in the American literary genre of great road trips--among Kerouac, Steinbeck, Pirsig, Least Heat-Moon. But these authors all traveled back roads looking for America, Morgan notes. The America Morgan sought during his 47-day trek "was a moving target, one traveling faster than the speed of reason. The other real America." Along the way Morgan explores the changes the auto has brought to the country, and talks with urban planners, historians, psychologists, and scores of others. "For us," Morgan writes, "the beauty of a road trip is the travel that takes place inside ourselves.... we can drift into a place where we're finally the person we might have been, could be, maybe still will be if things work out right." As such, though the narrative is wonderfully entwined with Morgan's life, and the journey and its ponderings are truly his, they are also often ours--even if his speedy Porsche Boxster is not. --Byron Ricks

Book Description

A critically acclaimed writer drives a Porsche across the United States, investigating how the automobile has shaped our lives and defined the American psyche.

According to John Updike, every seventeen years the average American male drives the distance from the Earth to the moon. But the average American male doesn't get to do it in a sleek silver Boxster on loan from Porsche. Fulfilling his lifelong fantasy, James Morgan took the Boxster, a model so new it had yet to be driven in America, and hit the road, often following the same trail (sometimes at speeds over 130 miles per hour) that Lewis and Clark took on their early crossing of the country.

The Distance to the Moon is about the American love affair with the car and the open road--what James Morgan calls "the epic entanglement that's defined this century and reshaped the face of America." Morgan takes us from Florida to Oregon, stopping at sites such as Carhenge (think Stonehenge, with cars, in Nebraska) and interviewing everyone from the old car ad men--who knew what it was Americans yearned for--to car collectors, automobile designers, psychologists, and city planners in an attempt to find out why we're obsessed with our automobiles.

The Distance to the Moon is the story of one man whose dream came true--and how it changed him. It is for everyone who has ever shared Morgan's fantasy of jumping in a fast car and hitting the open road, never to return. James Morgan has been praised as a writer and craftsman who understands the American psyche. With him in the driver's seat, we enjoy every second of the ride.

Customer Reviews:

no matter where you go there you are.......2007-02-27

I remember reading this book and thinking how interesting it would be; but I found his comments a bit grating after a while. I'm sure it was a terrific trip, but I feel this might have been more judiciously edited.

Better than I thought.......2007-02-25

I was initially worried that this book would be too much about the car and not enough about the road...or Florida for that matter. It seemed as if the book took FOREVER just to get out of Florida. I was also worried that this book would be too much of a male fantasy. Luckily that part turned out not to be true and made for enjoyable reading.

But once the author got into Utah and places north and west of there things picked up. He met interesting people in bar and restaurants, saw a few oddities along the way.

The author unwinded as the journey continued. He talked about his previous cars, his previous wife and his previous jobs. Strife between his current wife was obvious from the start and I wonder if this trip was an excuse to mull over the end of his marriage. One never finds out.

The trip ended upruptly on the west coast. I thought it was a bit of a letdown; perhaps disillusionment seeped in and the author resided to his fate. He dropped off the Porsche in Portland and the love story with the car was over.

A Roadtrip into Middle-Aged Hornliness.......2003-10-06

We've all seen this guy at a stoplight and cringed. Ballcap pulled down to conceal creeping baldness, wraparound sunglasses in place to allow maximum "leerage," arm propped self-consciously atop the steering wheel -- a reminder that adulthood for some is just a sad continuation of high school, a pathetic attempt to prove one's sexual desirability by dressing the part. The saddest aspect of this ego trip are those left behind, particularly the author's third(!) wife, who clearly recognizes (present tense) that she can't trust him around other women -- women he approaches throughout the text as "possible scores." Gross book.

Fussing and Fretting Across the USA.......2002-01-13

Here's the life lesson this book confirmed: if you're going to share a long road trip with a companion and a car, best select both carefully. The Porsche Boxster featured in this book is obviously a primo vehicle for the journey. Alas, James Morgan is not the companion of choice, and this book -- whose premise of a Interstate journey from Miami to Portland atttracted me to it -- lost a star about every fifty pages. Ruminating on whether Americans as a people (and we are basically talking men here -- women exist mostly as ornaments impressed by cars) long most for the open road or the comforts of home, Morgan tells car stories, but not enough of them or particularly interesting ones. He worries about the designs of people he meets along the way and how much he spends on the motels where he stays. Earrings, scruffy beards, long straggly hair on those he meets seem to evoke in him images of horrors about to be inflicted on his person, although these folk invariably offer him kindness both small and large. Frequent flashbacks to his adolescence -- wink, wink -- hint strongly at the seductive qualities of cars he owned in his early driving years. He quarrels with his wife before embarking from Miami and too many pages are spent alluding to this quarrel (details of which are never shared) and the in-trip visit and numerous telephone calls that only seem to exacerbate it. On the evidence of this book, Morgan's trip brought more bother than pleasures or answers, and he writes of it with prose that is neither original or engrossing. My advice: don't subject yourself to his angst. Instead, take a fast car out for an open road run.

A car buff shares his love of the Boxster.......2001-06-14

James Morgan describes driving a Porsche Boxster from Miami to St. Louis to Portland to San Francisco. Morgan seems like the sort of person who experiences life as a series of car stories, and during the journey, he tells his life history with an emphasis on the automotive angle. The pivotal part of his road trip is in Portland, Oregon, which is famous for its anti-car, pro-transit policies that are known as the "new urbanism." Morgan attacks the new urbanists, and wonders why anyone would choose to stand on a windy rain-drenched street waiting for the bus when they could be driving their own car instead. It's particularly ironic when Portland planning specialists use contorted rationalizations to explain why they drive to work instead of taking the public transit that they're forcing down the throats of their fellow residents.

Morgan writes well, if you don't mind the autobiographical element overpowering the travel narrative. However, he's a dyed-in-the-wool car buff writing for other car buffs. Unless you're the sort of person who loves talking about cars, you may have difficulty connecting with this author.

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