Customer Reviews

Motel America: A State-By-State Tour Guide to Nostalgic Stopovers

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I bought this book because I wanted to go for a vacation while staying at vintage nostalgiac motels. I thought, why not pick up this book, this will be the perfect book, after all its subtitle reads: "A State-By-State Tour Guide to Nostalgic Stopovers"

Little did I realize that I would be wasting my money on a book peppered with very FEW motels that are actually inhabitable because either they were torn down, renovated into something else, or vacant! The author decided to spend a whopping two pages on each state's motels,...TWO PAGES on each state? You're kidding me!!?? To boot, he includes great postcard photos of vintage motels, but doesn't give any info about them 90% of the time!! What the heck is up with this guy! "Oh, here's a great mmotel,...of course I'm not going to actually tell you anything about it though!"

So, tell me how the heck are these, "stopovers" for anyone on a vacation looking for NOSTALGIC STOPOVERS? This book is listed under vacations in many bookstores and online bookstores,....it's 90% useless to anyone actually WANTING to stay at a vintage nostalgiac motel for God's sake! I can think of at least five different motels that ARE in service and date back to at least the 1950's if not earlier in my state alone! Well, after reading this little waste of time, I think I may just see about writing my own Nostalgic Motel travel guide!

Great photos, but then again this isn't a coffee table book of photos,....well, its not supposed to be anyway.

This book consists of a 4 page introduction which discusses the history of the subject, with the remainder dedicated to 2 page summaries of the motels in each state of the US. The pictures look mostly to be old postcards with a few original photos thrown in. Clearly the research on each state was not thorough. The few motels that are mentioned are seemingly picked at random, with short shrift given to each one.

Giving my own state of Michigan as an example, the authors picked one gem, The Cadet Motor Inn, and a few other motels along the same highway that were either closed or hardly worth mentioning. Although there are several hundred prime examples of the genre throughout the state that could have been featured, the authors chose instead to make disparaging remarks about the area, referring to Detroit as "the beat up capital of America's nearly pulverized auto industry."

We all realize that we have challenging issues facing many of the urban areas in the industrial states, so the author's commentary is un-needed, ill-advised and out of place. I bought this book because it proposes to be a "tour guide" for those interested in Roadside America and its rich history and traditions. Mentioning a few motels on one stretch of road while cautioning the reader to "not stay long," is hardly useful given the hundreds of wonderful, well-preserved motels throughout the country that are not even mentioned.

a road trip full of neon childhood memories...

a delightful guide to motels we remember as children...
neon and all!