Synopsis
In 1849 several hundred thousand Europeans and Americans trekked across the country for the gold fields of California - the Gold Rush being a defining moment in that country’s short history. John Clark followed the same historic roads and trails, retracing that journey through history. His travels took him through violent ghettos and even more violent hurricanes, desert sandstorms and blazing heat - cycling in areas where no sane person would choose to cycle. Along the way John Clark meets crazed war veterans, failing farmers, unemployed Mexican migrants, the washed up and those left over from the American Dream which the Gold Rush had done so much to form. His journey also took him through the wildest, the most beautiful and remotest parts of America. "Travel books can easily degenerate into egocentric self-portraits... John knows his craft better than that. Indeed, it's hard to open the book at a random page without being plunged into some vivid and revealing conversation John's had on tour, be it with some extreme, ironic character or simply a couple of unassuming, hospitable family folks. A competent, well crafted book... readers will learn a lot from this exploration of a country." - Velovision John Stuart Clark is a travel writer and cycling journalist as well as a cartoonist specialising in development issues. His credits include: Travel writing: Daily Telegraph, Travel Africa, TGO, Traveler’s Europe Cycling: Cycling Plus, Bicycle, Cycle and all major high street and specialist cycling magazines. Comic strips: Time Out, Independent, Economist, Al Jazeera, New Internationalist, Times supplements... as well as creating and illustrating the international mass circulation development comics produced by UNICEF. John Stuart Clarke’s previous book is The Chalke Way (new edition in preparation).
Funny, interesting, factual. I was with him the whole way and felt for him at his down times. A great and wonderful achievement in difficult circumstance. A good rea.
Ann Fields
Have you read After the Gold Rush: A bicycle journey through American history by John Stuart Clark? - Add your own review
