American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders [Paperback]

Richard Grant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2005

Fascinated by the land of endless horizons, sunshine, and the open road, Richard Grant spent fifteen years wandering throughout the United States, never spending more than three weeks in one place and getting to know America's nomads, truckers, tramps, rodeo cowboys, tie-dyed concert followers, flea market traders, retirees who live year round in their RVs, and the murderous Freight Train Riders of America (FTRA). In a richly comic travelogue, Grant uses these lives and his own to examine the myths and realities of the wandering life and its contradiction with the sedentary American dream. Along with a personal account, American Nomads traces the history of wandering in the New World, through vividly told stories of frontiersmen, fur trappers and cowboys, Comanche and Apache warriors, all the way back to the first Spanish explorers who crossed the continent. What unites these disparate characters, as they range back and forth across the centuries, is a stubborn conviction that the only true freedom is to roam across the land.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this cogent but uneven meditation on American wanderers past and present, British writer Grant, who has written for GQ and Esquire, parallels his own travels through the American Southwest with those of earlier explorers, conquerors, cowboys, Indians, bikers and hoboes. In 1985, the author, without prospects and sick of London's dreary weather, escaped to the U.S. He's spent the past 15 years feeding his "wanderlust, restlessness, itchy feet, antsy pants, white-line fever," crisscrossing the country, but sticking mainly to the Southwest. Along the way, he has grappled with certain questions, internally and in the articles he has written to finance his travels. As he puts it in his prologue, "What drove a man to spend his life in motion? Was it a natural human impulse, recognized and obeyed, or was it a disease of the soul? Why was the type so prevalent in America...?" To find the answers, he hung out at all-night truck stops, chatted with grizzled hitchhikers and rail tramps, and attended love and peace fests (including the popular Rainbow gatherings). He also spent time in libraries, researching the history of the wanderers-both native and European-who came before him. While certain profiles (e.g., of early Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca and mountain man Joe Walker) do absorb, Grant occasionally strays into the extraneous (a too-long chronicle of the horse's introduction into North America and a spotty history of the notorious Freight Train Riders of America are particular examples). It makes for a lively, though sometimes tiring, pastiche of travelogue and regurgitated history.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Grant, an English writer who has written for GQ and Esquire, has penned a travelogue par excellence, cloaked in the robes of a sociological examination of the American nomad. Resolved to leave his own sedentary life, the author spends time with an assortment of truckers, rodeo cowboys, RV-ers, and wanna-be Indians (usually white computer geeks looking for escape). He examines, too, records of some of the genuine nomads of our past, such as the explorer Cabeza de Vaca, the Indian hunter horse tribes, and the legendary frontiersman Joe Walker. Readers may feel a certain sadness about the artificiality of some modern versions of nomadism, especially during a passage in which, at a gathering of would-be American Indians, Grant searches for the genuine article. This is a wondrous essay, documenting a style of life that eschews government authority--property taxes, drug laws, gun laws, nudity laws, truancy laws, and sexual age-of-consent laws. For all the problems inherent in such a lifestyle, readers may still fantasize about what life could be like away from the rat race. Allen Weakland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802141803
• ISBN-13: 978-0802141804
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #767,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One hell of a ride...the adventures we all want and need., January 17, 2004

By 

desert critter (Tucson, Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Nomads: Travels With Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders (Hardcover)

The beginning of this book sucked me right in. Grant, at the time a recent escapee of dreary London life, tells of his first awestruck days in the American West. As a lifelong resident of the West, I loved hearing the author's outsider appreciation for this land.

Grant's tales kept me up late into the nights, unwilling to get off the road with him. His amazing command of language makes the stories come to life in the most vibrant possible way. I particularly like the way he weaves American history in with his travels, and includes fascinating characters, historical and contemporary. There's also a love story with interesting twists.

Have a seat on the passenger's side, roll down the window, and enjoy the ride. I sure did.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Enjoyed This Book, February 2, 2005

By 

M. Hori "Jesse Glass" (Urayasu, Chiba Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Nomads: Travels With Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders (Hardcover)

I picked this book up at a Waterstone's in Sheffield, under its U.K. title of Ghost Riders, and it brought me back to my hitch-hiking days in America. Grant, a Brit., gets "travel fever" and lights out on the same open road that Whitman, Twain, Jack London, Steinbeck, Kerouac, and scores of others celebrate in American lit. and popular culture. Grant gives us an up-dated version of what the American open road is all about c. 1990 to 2003, with truckers, Native Americans, Vietnam Vets, the utopian Rainbow Family, the Elephant-like migrations of the SUV crowd and all the nameless, homeless, motel drifters and doorway leaners that we usually pass by in a blaze of chrome and a tinkle of "Route 66." Grant gives these people names and shows a bit of their desperation as well as their triumph in living a life of freedom in the post-modern USA. Grant also gives us hints of his own unhappy life and how all the loose ends are finally tied together by the return of his roving lady love. For anyone who has spent a day with their thumb out and a night camped under the desert stars, this book will be a reminder, and for those who haven't, this book might tempt them to give it a shot. This was a great read. Not as light as it first appeared, especially in the section on the history of the Native Americans, America's first nomads.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Herodotus On the Road, July 27, 2004

By 

Theo Logos (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Nomads: Travels With Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders (Hardcover)

American Nomads was part of my summer reading list, a little lighter reading than my usual fare I thought. While Grant's book delivered as an enjoyable and swift read that was not too heavy, it also surprised me with its grasp of Western history and valuable insights.
Richard Grant is a Brit with an inclination to ramble. He fell in love with the wide-open spaces and endless road of the American West, and began a life of rambling all over the West at will. When he ran out of money, he returned to England and sold articles about his adventures until he raise another stake to come back and repeat the process. This book, his first, is the logical outcome of that process.
Grant artfully blends his own adventures on the road with historical examples illustrating the nomadic instinct that the open spaces of the West seem to draw out from those who live there. His chapters on conquistador Cabeza de Vaca, mountain man Joe Walker, and the Comanche tribe are particularly well researched and written. (His writing on the conquistador has inspired me to read Cabeza de Vaca's own Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America.)These subjects are well chosen, both as dynamic interesting stories, and for their instructiveness to Grant's theme.
Along side of these historical set-pieces, Grant tells of his own adventures on the road with psychotic hitchhikers, old school hobos, the drunken dregs of the Rainbow family, and methed-out crazy rodeo bull riders, among others. He ponders on how so many of the nomads that he meets in the West tend to be societies walking wounded , and notes the hardships and misunderstandings of being a nomad in a largely sedentary culture. But this is no whining treatise. Grant's joy in and love for a wandering life in the beautiful empty spaces of the West is palpable, and if you feel any inclination in that direction, possibly contagious.
If you love road books and well-done history, consider American Nomads a must read.

Theo Logos