Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey

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Author(s):

William Least Heat-Moon

Label: Little, Brown and Company
Publisher(s):

Little, Brown and Company

Studio: Little, Brown and Company
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
Binding: Hardcover
List Price: $27.99
Our Price: $18.47
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

About a quarter century ago, a previously unknown writer named William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue Highways. Acclaimed as a classic, it was a travel book like no other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had embarked on an American journey off the beaten path. Sticking to the small places via the small roads--those colored blue on maps--he uncovered a nation deep in character, story, and charm.
Now, for the first time since Blue Highways, Heat-Moon is back on the backroads. ROADS TO QUOZ is his lyrical, funny, and touching account of a series of American journeys into small-town America.

Customer Reviews

Finally finished Quoz

Heat-Moon is as talented as ever interviewing ordinary people who turn out to be extraordinary under his friendly scalpel. But his obsession with his word "Quoz" is neverending and tiresome. Great book if every reference to "Quoz" were removed.

Roads to Quoz

Moon does it again--- something that appeals to the "down to earth" Americans. Least H. has a collection of stories about real people whose work and toil make this country a success.
Having lived in and traveled much of the area I can vouch for his accurate descriptions of real perople.

An engaging tour of quaint and quirky people and places

"Samuel Johnson said it in five words: `Solitude is dangerous to reason,'" writes the author. "I can think of no greater reason for taking to the American road."

In 1982, William Least Heat-Moon published Blue Highways, a remarkable book whose title refers to highways colored blue on maps. Now, in Roads to Quoz, he ventures again off the beaten path to encounter quirky but charming out-of-the-way places and people.

With an easy banter, Heat-Moon engages those whom he meets along the way--colorful characters eager to tell their stories. Venturing from Florida to New Mexico, Maine, and Idaho, and to other states in between, he writes with the delightful wit and humor reminiscent of Twain, Steinbeck, or Jack Kerouac.

He explains that "quoz" (rhymes with Oz) means anything out of the ordinary: "anything strange, incongruous, or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious."

Not all of America, perhaps not even the best, can be found along the Interstate highways or in the big cities. As the poet Robert Frost put it, "I took the road less traveled by--and that has made all the difference."

William Least Heat-Moon, the pen name of William Trogdon, is of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He lives near Columbia, Missouri, on an old tobacco farm he's returning to forest. His first book, Blue Highways, is a narrative of a 13,000-mile trip around America on back roads. His second work, PrairyErth, is a tour on foot into a small corner of the great tallgrass-prairie in eastern Kansas. River-Horse is an account of his four-month, sea-to-sea voyage across on the United States on its rivers, lakes, and canals. His three books on travels have never been out of print. Heat-Moon is also the author of Columbus in the Americas, a compendium of the explorer's adventures in the New World.

Quoz

I wasn't sure there was a word for what happens to me when I read Heat-Moon's works. I find treaures in them that seem to be written just for me to find. How can that be?

"PrairyErth" was such a treasure-box; I have read it every year since it was written, each time finding something new. "Roads to Quoz" is also such a book. Its wisdom, depth and humor take you on journeys that are pure joy for the intellect and the imagination.

Heat-Moon's "roads to Quoz" cover a vast area, so I was suprised that one of his Quoz stories mentioned a tiny town in Kansas called "Otis". It is where my mother grew up. I cannot explain such crossings of paths, but at least now I have a word for them: Quoz.

This is simply a gem of a book. It looks forward and backward at the same time, giving insights along the way, and finding wonder.
Gary Gackstatter, St Louis

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