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The review: My first lesson in U.S. geography was courtesy of Bobby Troup. No, he wasn't a grade-school geography teacher; he wrote the song "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66" You remember: "Now you go through St. Looey/Joplin, Missouri/Oklahoma City is mighty pretty." Troup rattles off seven more rhyming cities and states in that verse of the song, which I didn't know until reading this book, was written with the help of the AAA map Troup used to plan his cross-country trek from Lancaster, Pa. to California in 1946. It's just one of the scores of fascinating facts you'll find here, as Krim traces America's most famous road from Idea (the desire for a road that connected the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast) to Fact (commissioned as U.S. 66 in 1926) to Symbol (the "Mother Road" of The Grapes of Wrath, the place to "get your kicks" in Troup's song, and the inspiration for countless books, films, recordings, Web sites, etc.).
The Expanded Third Edition of Route 66 Adventure Handbook is the guide to take if you can make the trip along the still-passable sections of U.S. 66 or the one to read if you want a sense of the people and places that helped transform 66 from 2,448 miles of road to a national symbol and international icon.
