Synopses & Reviews
From the bestselling author of
Oracle Bones and
River Town comes the final book in his award-winning trilogy, on the human side of the economic revolution in China.
In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China. Hessler writes movingly of the average people — farmers, migrant workers, entrepreneurs — who have reshaped the nation during one of the most critical periods in its modern history.
Country Driving begins with Hessler's 7,000-mile trip across northern China, following the Great Wall, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau. He investigates a historically important rural region being abandoned, as young people migrate to jobs in the southeast. Next Hessler spends six years in Sancha, a small farming village in the mountains north of Beijing, which changes dramatically after the local road is paved and the capital's auto boom brings new tourism. Finally, he turns his attention to urban China, researching development over a period of more than two years in Lishui, a small southeastern city where officials hope that a new government-built expressway will transform a farm region into a major industrial center.
Peter Hessler, whom The Wall Street Journal calls one of the Western world's most thoughtful writers on modern China, deftly illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against foreigners, is now building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world.
Review
“If you want to understand todays China, and the forces changing it, you need to read Country Driving.” < i=""> The Huffington Post <>
Review
“Peter Hessler, a modern Marco Polo crossing China in a rented Jeep Cherokee, has witnessed signs and wonders worthy of a Coen brothers film. . . . Every so often, I read a book that upends my perceptions about a place. This is one of them.” < i=""> Bloomberg News <>
Review
“A fascinating road trip through a land in transition. . . . Hesslers description of Chinas new drivers is hilarious. . . . Country Driving tells us as much about contemporary China even when Hessler is not on the road.” < i=""> The Christian Science Monitor <>
Review
“Exceptionally moving. . . . Hilarious. . . . An absolutely terrific book, at once highly entertaining and deeply instructive. . . . Country Driving is a wonderful book about China that also happens to be a terrific book about the human race. Jonathan Yardley, < i=""> The Washington Post <>
Review
“Hessler has made a career of interpreting contemporary China and, for my money, nobody does it better. . . . Hessler is a magnificent guide to this largely uncharted territory, witty, insightful, keenly aware of the ironies of this communist-capitalist society.” < i=""> The Minneapolis Star Tribune <>
Review
“Hessler is a keen observer of mind-catching details and an engaging storyteller. . . . Full of exotic detail, solid reporting, and ironic observation, Country Driving offers a personal snapshot of the worlds second superpower hurtling through the 21st century.” < i=""> The Boston Globe <>
Review
“Lively. . . . Engaging. . . . Hessler sets out with some suspect maps and a great deal of bravado. . . . He shows the effects Chinas ever expanding network of roads exerts on individual lives. . . . Hessler [has an] irresistible urge to follow a story.” < i=""> The New York Times Book Review <>
Review
“Extraordinary. . . . Country Driving, like Hesslers previous works, tells the story of Chinas transformation powerfully and poetically.” < i=""> The Economist <>
Review
“Delightful. . . . Epic. . . . The reporting in Country Driving is impressive in its scope. . . . Hessler delivers eloquent disquisitions on everything from how to buy a used car in China to the history of the Mongol conquest.” Dwight Garner, < i=""> The New York Times <>
Review
“Hesslers genius has always been in his wry commentary and ability to transcribe the rhythms of his environment onto the page. . . . From this cast of thousands emerges a picture of great hopes tinged with sadness at what is being cast aside without second thought.” < i=""> The Wall Street Journal <>
Review
“The best yet from Peter Hessler, whose two earlier books, River Town and Oracle Bones, were exemplary forays into the genre. . . . Told with his characteristic blend of empathy, insight, and self-deprecating humor.” < i=""> Time <>
Review
andldquo;A generation of travel writers owes a debt to Therouxandrsquo;s immersive, first-person narratives, captured with unflinching, sometimes merciless candor.andrdquo; andmdash; New York Times Book Review
Review
andquot;Free of the sense of alienation that marked his recent travelogues, this luminous sojourn is Therouxand#39;s best outing in years.andquot;and#160;andmdash;
Publishers Weekly, starredand#160;and#160;andquot;As thoughtful as it is evocative, the book offers insight into a significant region and its people and customs. An epically compelling travel memoir.andquot;and#160;andmdash;
Kirkus Reviews, starredand#160;
andldquo;A generation of travel writers owes a debt to Therouxandrsquo;s immersive, first-person narratives, captured with unflinching, sometimes merciless candor.andrdquo; andmdash;New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
“Hessler has a marvelous sense of the intonations and gestures that give life to the moment.” —
The New York Times Book Review From Peter Hessler, the New York Times bestselling author of Oracle Bones and River Town, comes Country Driving, the third and final book in his award-winning China trilogy. Country Driving addresses the human side of the economic revolution in China, focusing on economics and development, and shows how the auto boom helps China shift from rural to urban, from farming to business.
Synopsis
One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked.
Synopsis
A gripping account of China’s failed attempt at social engineering and its pervasive effects on the Chinese people
Synopsis
One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America andmdash; theand#160;Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nationandrsquo;s worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. Itandrsquo;s these parts of the South, so often ignored, that have caught Therouxandrsquo;s keen travelerandrsquo;s eye.and#160;and#160;On road trips spanning four seasons,and#160;wending along rural highways, Theroux visits gun shows and small-town churches, laborers in Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi where they still call the farm up the road andldquo;the plantation.andrdquo; He talks to mayors and social workers, writers and reverends, the working poor and farming families andmdash; the unsung heroes of the south, the people who, despite it all, never left, and also those who returned home to rebuild a place they could never live without.and#160;and#160;From the writer whose andldquo;great mission has always been to transport us beyond that reading chair, to challenge himself andmdash; and thus, to challenge usandrdquo; (Boston Globe), Deep South is an ode toand#160;a region, vivid and haunting, full of life and loss alike.
Synopsis
An intimate investigation of the world’s largest experiment in social engineering, revealing how China became what it is today, where it’s inevitably headed, and the implications for the rest of the world China adopted its one-child policy in 1979, exercising unprecedented control over the reproductive habits of more than one billion people. China now seems poised to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy, but this law may be its undoing. The Soviet Union collapsed because of its wrongheaded attempt to engineer the market. What will come of China’s attempt to engineer its population? Mei Fong reveals the true human impact of government-mandated family planning, traveling across China to meet the people who live with its consequences. Their stories reveal a dystopian reality: unauthorized second children ignored by the state, only children supporting aging parents and grandparents on their own, villages teeming with ineligible bachelors. This demographic imbalance, Fong argues, will lead to further economic and societal turmoil in the years to come. Fong has spent over a decade documenting the repercussions of the one-child policy on every sector of Chinese society. She offers a nuanced and candid account of government planning gone awry.
About the Author
Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as the Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town, which won the Kiriyama Prize; Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and, most recently, Country Driving. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011. He lives in Cairo.