Travels With Charley In Search of America by John Steinbeck

There's never been a Steinbeck I didn't love, and this book is no exception!

B&N.com says, "To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. And he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, on a particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and on the unexpected kindness of strangers that is also a very real part of our national identity." This book is in turns funny, poignant and contains a nauseating view of a sliver of the Civil Rights movement in the South. Steinbeck starts his journey in New York, cutting across the American midwest into Oregon and California - finding that it is true what they say, "You can never go home again." He then continues through Texas into New Orleans and then back up through the Eastern states to return home. Very isolated parts of this book drag, but for the most part it is an interesting view of our country during the early 1960's. Several areas made me laugh out loud. Steinbeck's interaction with his poodle, Charley, will cause any dog lover to smile more than once. Not a novel, but a well-recalled tale of his personal journey, this will be one that I will certainly read again someday. Among my favorite quotes from the book: "I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."