Rating: 
Summary: Just Okay
Review: I loved Blue Highways and Prairyerth, but found River-Horse to be just okay. Every night when I picked up the book to read, I briefly considered putting it back down and starting something else. But I did finish it, and am probably the richer for it. I most appreciated the descriptions of the country as seen from the water and, yes, I guarantee that all readers will begin fantasizing about a long river cruise. The interweave of local, national, and natural history that is Least Heat Moon's hallmark was again very enjoyable. So what's my problem? The author's admission near the very end of his narrative that this river voyage has probably cost him another marriage (I believe it is near the beginning of Blue Highways that we learn he has just separated from an earlier wife) made me wonder if I'd found the source of my ambivalence about the book. Clearly, there was an untold story here, and maybe more fueled his voyage than a simple desire to "mess about in boats" with a bunch of learned good old boys across the length of the nation. It's not that I'd have preferred page after page of detail about his personal problems, but more a feeling that he'd not been particularly honest with the reader. It made me wonder if, unlike many "travel" writers, Least Heat Moon voyages to avoid self discovery.
Rating: 
Summary: Engulfed in the Tale
Review: A life-long fan of travel books, I've seldom found a journey more completely told and understood. Least Heat-Moon's voyage became my own and more than that, an inspiration to live life engulfed and not merely experienced at a comfortable float.
Rating:
Summary: A must for the "heart of america" junkie.
Review: As one who loves to read/hear of travels thru the heart of this great country, I found River-Horse to be a great "vacation book." As soon as I saw it , I had to have it to read on my week at the beach. I was not disappointed. Least Heat-Moon rewards the reader with great sentences of descriptive musings of his travels by water from coast-to-coast. Those who have read Blue Highways won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A watery USA we never see
Review: Jay O. Sanders reading of this audiobook and the wordsmithery of William Least Heat-Moon combine for an unforgettable listening journey through the waterworld of a USA we never see and never knew existed. From the Verrazano Bridge in New York harbor to the Columbia river mouth in the Pacific you ride the dory "River Horse" and the Grumman canoe to places,times and existences that seem part of an alien world. A powerful, relentless, personal triumph of one man's driven obsession to cross inland America by water. I loved Prarie Erth and Blue Highways before this but this one is very deep water indeed.
Rating: 
Summary: i just went across the country and never left the house
Review: another good book. well put together and i felt as if i was the second mate on that boat good book brings out the goodness of america and americans. check it out could almost be the On the road of river travel
Rating:
Summary: another major success; classic Heatmoon
Review: _River Horse_ is a treatment of a journey across the USA. By boat. With minimal portage. Got to be pretty determined to pull such a thing off. To our good fortune, Heatmoon is a determined man. In this book he does the thing that no other does as well: creative descriptiveness. That expression sounds as though I'm suggesting he makes stuff up; on the contrary, I tend to believe just about every word he says. What it means is that he uses the cleverest ways I've ever seen to paint the picture. Heatmoon is excellent with the language, but does not limit himself to it. Most books include too many photos; the way Heatmoon writes, fewer is better, because he tends to reduce the need for them. He'll draw diagrams, use metaphors, just about anything you weren't expecting. He can also be counted upon for a creative and interesting structure to his work, and he does so here, breaking the journey up into perhaps twelve sections of travel, each with a photograph. The interplay between characters is interesting and amusing, and thus his book includes not just the rivers but the river people. Nothing Heatmoon does is designed for those with minimal attention spans, and _River Horse_ is no exception. However, everything he does is designed for anyone who wants a view of the subject that is at once wide-angle and high-magnification. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Another Great Journey
Review: While reading Prairyerth, I kept wondering when that large book on the 'dull' Kansas landscape was going to follow suit and become tedious to read. It was with much joy and amazement that I found unexpected pleasures in each new chapter, and was kept engaged by Mr. Heat-Moon right to the end. This book is neither Prairyerth's Deep Map of Chase County, Kansas or Blue Highways circling of the United States. It comes close to being a perfectly realized combination of the two however: a close look at the lifeblood of this countries Lands, Waters & People(s), and their shared history. It is delightful: Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Preachy & Dull
Review: Overall the book is pretty dull. In order to liven up sections Heat=Moon tries to get us worried about whether or not he'll hit his timeline or even sink the boat. After a few of these exagerrated concerns are told the remaining ones are not at all believable. Every few pages he also likes to remind us how bad Americans are at keeping our environment spotless and wild. This coming from a man cruising the rivers in a twin engine boat, and on shallower parts even puts a motor on his canoe. This, also coming from a man who would not have gotten past New York if it wasn't for the Erie Canal. Preaching, during a book like this, is normal and expected. He just takes it over the top and by the end of the book I was rooting for another dam to be built. Finally, there are too many stories about himself and how he was feeling and not enough anecdotes about people he met along the way. It's those colorful stories that usually make travel books likes these interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Long, boring boat trip across America
Review: The late Spiro Agnew ("nattering nabobs of negativism") would have loved this book's language, even though he would have hated its sentiments. W. L. H-M offers the basic environmentalist's screed, and even though I personally agree with much of it, his is a novel approach: he will try to win your agreement through interminable boredom. If you like pedantry, you'll love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Westward Ho
Review: I am an armchair river freak. While I have not been on the waters of most great American rivers, I love sitting in my study and following the course of rivers, creeks, and various watersheds in the U.S. I love cataloging rivers too, using an encyclopedic approach, grouping entries under regions and by alphabetic order.
So we start with Maine and we have Allagash, Androscoggin, Aroostook; New Hampshire with Ammonoosuc, Ammonoosuc, Upper Fork, Androscoggin, Ashuelot, and so forth. So, I am, wholly unapologetically, a huge nerd.
This book, "River Horse" is the closest thing I have seen to my Bible. The only other one that has come close to it in terms of my hallowed readings is John McPhee's "Basin and Range" (oh, did I mention, I am a highlands freak as well).
This book is sumptuously chock full of delightfully evocative material of the great terra incognita of the midsection of our continent. I have not allowed myself to finish reading it. Bought it a couple of years back and have only gotten to Cape Girardeau. I indulge myself to reread chapters, take notes, reread them again, make new annotations, look them up in the Webster's Geographic Dictionary, check out things on USGS maps, and gaze endlessly at blocks of regions in Rand McNally's Road Atlas.
Thirty years back I had been a marathon hitchiker, taking off at a moment's notice from my college town of Bloomington, Indiana, finding myself in gorgeously geographically rich purlieus like Owego, NY, off The Southern Tier Expressway at sunset in high summer, walking the hills around New Paltz, NY, in the Lower Catskills on a sunny spring morning, in a field of grasshoppers off of I-69 north of Anderson, Indiana, on an Indian Summer day in October, riding a city bus into Oakland, PA, to stay for a night in the student union at the University of Pittsburgh...the list goes on.
So where do I begin descibing my joy with this book. Basically, it has it all, all the experiences of a wayward Tom Sawyer, set to music of the mind, perhaps something that John Hartford could have plucked out on his banjo in a river captain piece.
The gothic past of the Dutch Manor country of the mid-Hudson, the oceanic swells of redoubtable, but mostly unknown American lakes like Oneida and Chautauqua, the lustful callouts of tertiary waterways in the American interior, Anderson (IN), Chickamauga (OH), Beaver (PA), Schoharie (NY); the notations of random riverine circumstance, how the leviathan Tennessee and Cumberland, both emtpy only furlongs apart after coursing through abjectly differing regions of the Southern Plateau; the miasmic conditions of the great riparian epicenter at Cairo, IL, the ancient Indian mounds in the Upper Ohio Valley; the local pieces of great rivers (Long Reach, Smoky Island, Blennerhasset Island); the restored ancient hotels; the lost history of centuries of Native Americans, trappers, parsons, industrialists, speculators, soiled doves, aide-de-camps.
It's all there, the great drama of our continental drift. The denouement of the Erie Canal, the Roman a Clef of the Muskingum, the presagement of the Kentucky, the betrayal of the Wabash, the epiphany of the Scioto. The places: Newburgh, IN, Economy, PA, Port Gibson, NY, Willow Island, WV.
It must be read. Again. And Again. And again if need be. All citizens must be made to pass the River Horse test to renew their status as deserved denizens of our gilded country. This is the one.
Having said all that, Moon tends to love his metaphors just a wee too much (I never do :). His run-on descriptions get a bit too sinuous for all but the most devoted armchair river rats. But who cares. The guy has done it, one of the great shunpiking classics of our time.
This is the book that has it all
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