New Yorker contributor and decade-long staffer Matt Dellinger uses the controversy surrounding Interstate 69 as a lens through which to examine middle America's current political, social, and economic landscape, including hot-button issues like NAFTA and the country's troubled infrastructure. If completed, I-69 will stretch from Canada to Mexico through Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. In the works for more than twenty years, the highway has been both eagerly anticipated as an economic godsend and the center of a firestorm of protests by local environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, anarchists, and others who question both the wisdom of building more highways and the merits of globalization.
Part history, part travelogue, Interstate 69 chronicles the last great highway project in America, introducing the people who have worked tirelessly to build it or stop it from being built, and the many places it would change forever.
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"A well-written, fair, well researched, and easy to read book about a planned road I knew little about. Does a good job of looking at the pros and cons of new roads and the people who love and hate them."
— Anthony (4 out of 5 stars)
A rollicking dispatch from the heartland as great plans are laid for a mega-highway just at the moment when America runs out of gas.
— James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere" Parts of this were great and Dellinger has a fantastic eye for characters and anecdotes but a story that stretches across so much distance and time needs stronger organization. "
— Denali, 3/31/2012" Parts of this were great and Dellinger has a fantastic eye for characters and anecdotes but a story that stretches across so much distance and time needs stronger organization. "
— Denali, 2/24/2011Matt Dellinger is a writer-journalist, photographer, and multimedia producer. He produced and hosted the New Yorker Out Loud, the magazine’s first weekly podcast. Before that, he served on the staff of the New Yorker for ten years as an illustrations editor, multimedia producer, and manager of editorial projects. In addition to the New Yorker, Dellinger’s writing has appeared in the Atlantic, the Oxford American, the Smithsonian, the Wall Street Journal magazine, and the New York Times. A graduate of DePauw University, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He has earned multiple Earphones Awards and been named in AudioFile magazine’s list of the year’s best narrations for six years.