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Title: A Bumpy, Uneven Ride
Review: This could have been a wonderful book, in fact, parts of it are quite good. But overall, the book gets bogged down by the snotty, I'm-smarter-and-more-hip-than-you'll-ever-be tone of its author. Brinkley intersperses snippets of regional history with reminiscences about the adventures he and his students had while touring through those regions. I bought this book fully expecting to prefer the personal pieces to the history, but found the opposite to be true. Being a Canadian with little more than a very basic level of exposure to U.S. history, I can honestly say I learned a good deal from this book.But in between those chunks of history, one has to bear Brinkley's endless name dropping (he knows Ken Kesey and knew William S. Burroughs, to name but two) and his oh-so-appropriately chosen tapes to play while rolling through each stop on the tour. (Elvis in Memphis, LL Cool J in LA.)Brinkley should stick to writing pure history and leave the personal stuff out.
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