FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA, A PRESENT-DAY JOURNEY INTO AMERICA’S PAST

 Gavin Young, Hutchinson 1995.

Gavin Young on America – an irresistible combination in which one of Britain’s most distinguished travel writers delves deep into the sustaining myths and realities of the most powerful and surprising country on earth.

America is more than New York and Los Angeles, and the powerful myths which have built the country and are still present if you know where to find them.

Gavin Young, author of Slow Boats to China, knows them better than almost anyone else. His adventurous journey reveals a country still living its myths, although these have changed.

 The story begins in Central Park, but it moves swiftly into other worlds: the world of Moby Dick in those old whale-haunted Atlantic ports; the drama of the Civil War and Sherman’s terrible march to ‘make Georgia Howl’; the world of the Alamo; Arizona and The Grapes of Wrath; Philip Marlowe and the quest for Raymond Chandler; the Klondyke, the frozen Yukon, and the defining myths of Jack London; and then to the home of the grizzlies, the ranges where millions of buffalo roamed and where Custer took his last stand on the plains of Montana.

This vivid, energetic, hugely enjoyable travel book is on the scale of the country itself.

Both the book and the dust jacket are in very good condition.