Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway

by Matt Dellinger Narrated by Robert Fass

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The genesis and subsequent history of the controversial I-69 highway, still underway after 20 years and still being debated, makes for colorful, quirky reading. Already running through Michigan and parts of Indiana, I-69 may continue on through Indianapolis, Memphis, Shreveport, and a few Texas bergs. If completed, it will stretch from Canada to Mexico. Detractors of the undertaking, projected to cost over $30 billion, describe it as a "NAFTA highway," an attempt to diminish U.S. economic primacy in favor of overall North American commerce. "Promoters speak as if their highway would be the mythical rainbow. Spanning the countryside, it would spin off glittering paths to fill pots of gold in every town and hamlet." Dellinger examines the many non-governmental options currently on the table, some involving the controversial practice of allowing foreign companies to lease roads long-term and charge escalating tolls. On the other side of the blacktop, anarchists have riled older, more conservative opponents of the interstate with disruptive and damaging acts. This well-researched book brings an engaging group of idealists, politicians, and observers to the middle of one of America's most famous stretches of road.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Publisher

"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

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171297893
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/31/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

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