Rating: 
Summary: American Zen
Review: The third chronicle of his continuing travels of this country, River Horse, William Least Heat Moon's takes us once again along the less traveled path, seeking what is genuine in the American experience. A good writer makes us see the world differently. Whether wandering along a blue highway, trodding along the eastern edge of the great plains, or fighting bars, sawyers and snags upriver, Least Heat Moon turns his trained eye to the things that don't register on our radar as we trudge through our busy days. If you want a reminder of how to smell the roses, read one of his books.In River Horse, Least Heat Moon continues to demonstrate his mastery of the travelogue form, as he plucks the flowers from between the thorns of the American experience. His prose is flawless. It also seems he wants us to learn more about our language; he sent me to the dictionary more than once, looking up Superior Person's words such as: adventitious, ambulant, cormorant, divagation, execrate, indurate, jactitation, omphalos, and striated. Only my OED had the definition for "fulginous." This book is more personal, and more overtly political than his previous work. Corporate America, especially in the West has its tentacles into the political machine and is strangling our land and our waterways. The back of the book has addresses to contact environmental and preservation organizations. Including them is the author's call to action. The warm references to Lewis & Clark confused me, though, as they were the pathfinders for the Corporate raiders of the environment. Moon's strengths lie in moving slowly and looking closely at his subject. River Horse suffers from a deadline, imposed by nature, man, and the author's ambition. I liked Blue Highways more, and Prairyerth much more, partly because of their unhurried pace. I read his books to get back in touch with the details out there in the American experience, the deadlines await me here in the office.
Rating:
Summary: Great escape every night.
Review: Great narrative of a brave jaunt. This man knows how to live. Use of words is incredible, though sometimes I found myself thrown by too many long ones in one sentence and I wished I knew more about Pilotis and the interactions with others along the way. Yet each night I looked forward to getting back into bed and figuratively taking this journey along with Heat-Moon, an invitingly great escape from the regularity of life.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious, thy Name is River Horse
Review: This must have been one very long, boring and tedious trip. It has taken me almost as long to read the book as it took the author to make the trip. I stayed with it because the idea of seeing America from the riverbank was most appealing. I was disappointed and I think the author was too!
Rating: 
Summary: Travelogue, not odyssey
Review: Travel narratives are my favorite genre, and Heat-Moon's classic, Blue Highways, certainly belongs on my short list. I was really looking forward to River-Horse--another sweep across America, by a perceptive and thoughtful writer and observer. The book has been a disappointment, and though it is worth reading, it is not of the level that I expected from the author. I think the main weakness of the book is that there is hardly any human interaction. The brief encounters the author has with folks along the route really do make them seem like stock characters rather than interesting individuals. The author's wonderful introspection, which enriched Blue Highways so much, just isn't here. At one point along the Ohio River the author has a conversation in a cafe, and rather than relating that conversation, hints that he is saving it to use in a future novel. I felt cheated at that point--here I am, in this book, wanting this adventure to be rich and illuminating. What the reader is left with is a series of historical anecdotes, descriptions of bridges and banks, with occasional comments from his mate Pilotis, a composite of several people (again, an interesting idea, but I found myself wondering at any given section of the trip just who was with WLHM). I really wanted this book to be good, not another Blue Highways, but good all the same, and it just fell short.
Rating:
Summary: Heat-Moon Water Deep
Review: Having read Blue Highways and PrairyErth, I was anxious to read this new work by one of the profound writers we have with us on this planet. This book was well worth the wait. In comparison to his other books, this is closer to Blue Highways in that it is a travel scenario; more of what he sees as he travels, less of what he thinks. And it seems he's thinking about being in a hurry most of this trip. Heat-Moon is detailed observer throughout, and the points he makes about our environment should be taken very seriously. My only complaints are: 1.Too many nautical terms for us land-lubbers. 2.Not a leisurely pace, merrily, merrily down the stream. It's pretty frantic most of the time, as I'm sure boat travel would be. But overall, this is a great read; a great travel and environmental book which will take you across this nation on our forgotton blue highways: rivers. This too is another of Heat-Moon's 'deep maps'.
Rating: 
Summary: Courageous Cruise
Review: William Least Heat-Moon is one of America's great travellers, that rare writer who possesses both a moral sense and a sense of humor. So when he set out across America by boat in a C-Dory named Nikawa, it wasn't too much to expect a tale full of eccentrics, humor, watery reflections and even anger. I wasn't disappointed: Heat-Moon has given readers a book that glows with his appreciation (and understanding) of the American spirit even as he champions neglected American waterways. But I found that despite its coast-to-coast direction, River-Horse is not a simple book. It challenges us to board Nikawa and take a journey that is not always lively or action-filled, to feel the motion of times past when river travel was the way by which everyone, including Lewis and Clark, really saw America first. In River-Horse, Heat-Moon captures the nature of the waters beneath the hull: sometimes fast, other times tranquil even tedious, but never out of rhythm with the natural world. I think his courage continues to give his work a strength of character rare in today's politically-correct atmosphere: Heat-Moon sees the once pristine river world we now use as a dump, cattle watering hole or industrial outland and rages at the political lethargy and community ignorance which condone and ignore these desecrations. I expected River-Horse to be another Blue Highways, but it is its own book with its own genius; here, the natural world takes the place of people met along the way, and what a companion it turns out to be.
Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Adventure
Review: What was more difficult: completing the trip or keeping the log? That's what I wondered as WLHM traversed the country with few moments to spare for recording thoughts, let alone thinking them. I see this book as anything but commercial tripe. If that was Heat Moon's purpose, he would have chosen Pokemon, not Pilotis, as his helmsman. The book is about self-reliance, about reliance on others, about confronting our fears of failure. It's about attempting to patch together a broken life and reads at times like an elegy for a wilderness that is no more. I found bits of folklore, superstition, anecodote, certainly geography and natural history, woven into a narrative that works. Best of all, WLHM avoids the cliches that immediately come to mind when reading about such a trip. The book is as courageous as the trip, and I have nothing but praise for both efforts (my only qualification is a diction that sent me running to the dictionary, sometimes unnecessarily). Quo vadis, two nuts? (I first thought of Clueless on a Lark, but thought that too disrespectful to all parties.)
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, Poorly Written, and Self-Indulgent
Review: I find it hard to believe that the reviews on this page refer to the same book I read--or should say, TRIED to read. I abandoned the effort about three quarters of the way through the book after encountering a page of Ulysses parody that seemed to mark Least Heat Moon's decision to stop even trying to craft serious prose. By then the only thing that had kept me reading was the hours I'd wasted getting that far, in the hope that eventually something good would turn up. I was wrong. The book itself is nothing but a marketing concept beaten into the ground: let's take a boat ride from coast to coast. The focus is relentlessly on the Author's thoughts and you will learn very little about the thousands of miles of America he crosses. At the start, the author gives his companion a cutsy nickname instead of a real name. This gives us a hint that there will be no attempt to get to know character as the story unfolds. The few people met on the journey are treated as stereotypes. In the place of information or character development the author treats us to horrifying amounts of pretty writing, of the sort that calls for serious editing. I kept reading paragraphs out loud to my own (also unnamed) companion because they were so involuted and pretentious that they sounded like parody. If this is your idea of a great adventure, I'd suggest buying a kayak and hitting your nearest local stream or pond. You'll learn more in 20 minutes that way than you will plowing through this turgid would-be masterwork.
Rating:
Summary: A new Odyssey!
Review: This is an Odyssey to place beside Homer's. The trials of river Horse aka Nikawa and her skipper are filled with suspense and human interest. When I began to sense the tedium in the reading--I thought they would never get across Montana!--I realized the tedium is part of the journey and he wants us to feel their journey. One of the most engrossing chaters is the nine mile trek with a guide he calls Virgil and we sense the intertextuality of Odysseus' descent to Hades, of Aeneas, and of Dante. His account of the temptation to madness as he writes about the darkness of a barren Montana landscape at midnight is terrifying, and we rejoice with him and his companions as they see the lights that mean an escape from this descent into hell. I'm recommending this book to my friends, especially those who love canoes and boats and travel. After loving Blue Highways, I knew I would love River Horse. Least Heat Moon is a wordsmith who can hold the reader's attention, even when the words are mostly river river river river.
Rating:
Summary: Traveler's Treat
Review: The author is the Master of the Metaphors;Captain of the "Least" traveled America where the gristle, guts, and grit evolved. A Good Read!
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