The American Road Trip and American Political Thought

by Susan McWilliams Barndt

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498556880
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	07/06/2020
Series:	Politics, Literature, & Film
Pages:	138
Product dimensions:	6.05(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Susan McWilliams Barndt is chair and associate professor of the Department of Politics at Pomona College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Seekers
Chapter 2: The Walkers
Chapter 3: The Laborers
Chapter 4: The Bikers
Chapter 5: The Pretenders
Conclusion
Appendix: The Roads Not Taken
Bibliography
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Road trips define the American experience and character. Be it from the immigrants who travel to this country, Parkman’s Oregon Trail, Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or movies such as Thelma & Louise and Easy Rider, the road conveys powerful and often contradictory lessons for those who seek to learn from their experiences. Barndt’s brief book captures the American experience of the road, describing five different genres: seekers, walkers, laborers, bikers, and pretenders. For each type, Barndt (Pomona College) juxtaposes traveler stories, Whitman and Kerouac as seekers, Thoreau and Cheryl Strayed as walkers, the characters in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave and Grapes of Wrath as laborers, Hunter Thompson and Erika Lopez as bikers, and Griffin’s Black Like Me to Twain’ Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as portrayals of pretenders. The goal is to capture the contradictory experiences of the road, depending on race, class, gender, or sexual orientation, and locate the traveler’s experiences within a broader definition of American character. Travel stories are not simply autobiographical, they are statements about and of American political thought. Excellent for collections on American political thought, history, and literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice

Susan McWilliams Barndt has become my favorite traveling companion.  After reading Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political Theory, I was eager to hit the open road with her in The American Road Trip and American Political Thought.  Barndt takes the authors of travel stories as her guides to navigating the American political tradition.  Susan McWilliams Barndt smartly and elegantly explores the paradoxes of freedom and belonging in a vast, diverse republic. 

Natalie Taylor

Fasten your seatbelts for a magical tour. Susan McWilliams has written a truly delightful analysis about the literature of travel through American time and space.  Along the way, Road Trip offers formidable insights into American thought and culture. Suave, subtle, richly imagined, masterfully analyzed, beautifully written and altogether brilliant.     

James Morone

Susan McWilliams Barndt’s new book is motivated by a provocative premise: “That stories of American road trips are an important form of American political thought, and certainly more central to American political thought than almost anyone has recognized before” (xv). But if Barndt is a provocateur, she is also a powerful persuader. After reading The American Road Trip and American Political Thought, it is hard to deny that she is on to something: Barndt succeeds, by and large, in unearthing a previously unrecognized dimension of American political thought and in showing the analytical importance of that finding.

VoegelinView

Road trips define the American experience and character. Be it from the immigrants who travel to this country, Parkman’s Oregon Trail, Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or movies such as Thelma & Louise and Easy Rider, the road conveys powerful and often contradictory lessons for those who seek to learn from their experiences. Barndt’s brief book captures the American experience of the road, describing five different genres: seekers, walkers, laborers, bikers, and pretenders. For each type, Barndt (Pomona College) juxtaposes traveler stories, Whitman and Kerouac as seekers, Thoreau and Cheryl Strayed as walkers, the characters in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave and Grapes of Wrath as laborers, Hunter Thompson and Erika Lopez as bikers, and Griffin’s Black Like Me to Twain’ Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as portrayals of pretenders. The goal is to capture the contradictory experiences of the road, depending on race, class, gender, or sexual orientation, and locate the traveler’s experiences within a broader definition of American character. Travel stories are not simply autobiographical, they are statements about and of American political thought. Excellent for collections on American political thought, history, and literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews

McWilliams Barndt’s fine study of our shared highway proves a keen aid for gaining some orientation on this quintessentially American myth and matter-of-fact reality.

The Review of Politics

Road trips define the American experience and character. Be it from the immigrants who travel to this country, Parkman’s Oregon Trail, Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or movies such as Thelma & Louise and Easy Rider, the road conveys powerful and often contradictory lessons for those who seek to learn from their experiences. Barndt’s brief book captures the American experience of the road, describing five different genres: seekers, walkers, laborers, bikers, and pretenders. For each type, Barndt (Pomona College) juxtaposes traveler stories, Whitman and Kerouac as seekers, Thoreau and Cheryl Strayed as walkers, the characters in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave and Grapes of Wrath as laborers, Hunter Thompson and Erika Lopez as bikers, and Griffin’s Black Like Me to Twain’ Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as portrayals of pretenders. The goal is to capture the contradictory experiences of the road, depending on race, class, gender, or sexual orientation, and locate the traveler’s experiences within a broader definition of American character. Travel stories are not simply autobiographical, they are statements about and of American political thought. Excellent for collections on American political thought, history, and literature.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

CHOICE