Rating: 
Summary: No Nomads Here
Review: Imagine living in a home surrounded by lava flows, or on a small island where hurricanes are common and the one road out will be covered with water well before the storm hits. Jack Halpern has given a view, not only of five very extreme living conditions, but also of the strong-willed people who tenaciously cling to the place they call home. It is hard to decide which is more memorable, the unforgiving land or the people who weather the elements. For these hardy souls, home is a place of roots and continuity, a tenuous place in reality but a concrete place in mind, a place that truly defines them.
Rating:
Summary: Be It Ever So Humble.....
Review: Jake Halpern has written a remarkable first book. Not yet thirty years old, he's called numerous cities spread over three continents "home." Like most of us on this highly mobile world, home represented little more than a temporary base of operations. Working as a fact checker for the New Republic, Jake became increasingly fascinated by the concept of home as a central part of one's identity, and by those people so rooted to a particular place they would do anything to remain anchored there.After extensive research, Jake set out on an odyssey that took him to Princeville, North Carolina, a town submerged by a flood; Whittier, Alaska, a community at the end of a two and a half-mile long tunnel, and a community where almost everyone lives in a single, 14-story high rise; the "Lava-Side Inn," the last occupied home in a Hawaiian subdivision that's been cut off by a volcano's active flow; Malibu, California, where the descendants of pioneers still battle the wildlifes that sweep their region with alarming regularity; and Grand Isle, Louisiana, a lone outpost in the Gulf of Mexico where a few hardy souls always ride out the worst hurricanes. In these pages, you'll meet the independent, self-sufficient, heroic souls that Jake met during his journeys. You're very much the armchair traveler as he invites you into his motel room, the front seat of his rental car, and into the homes and lives of these memorable people. This is a great book to feed the mind and the heart.--William C. Hall
Rating:
Summary: Be It Ever So Humble.....
Review: Jake Halpern has written a remarkable first book. Not yet thirty years old, he's called numerous cities spread over three continents "home." Like most of us on this highly mobile world, home represented little more than a temporary base of operations. Working as a fact checker for the New Republic, Jake became increasingly fascinated by the concept of home as a central part of one's identity, and by those people so rooted to a particular place they would do anything to remain anchored there. After extensive research, Jake set out on an odyssey that took him to Princeville, North Carolina, a town submerged by a flood; Whittier, Alaska, a community at the end of a two and a half-mile long tunnel, and a community where almost everyone lives in a single, 14-story high rise; the "Lava-Side Inn," the last occupied home in a Hawaiian subdivision that's been cut off by a volcano's active flow; Malibu, California, where the descendants of pioneers still battle the wildlifes that sweep their region with alarming regularity; and Grand Isle, Louisiana, a lone outpost in the Gulf of Mexico where a few hardy souls always ride out the worst hurricanes. In these pages, you'll meet the independent, self-sufficient, heroic souls that Jake met during his journeys. You're very much the armchair traveler as he invites you into his motel room, the front seat of his rental car, and into the homes and lives of these memorable people. This is a great book to feed the mind and the heart.--William C. Hall
Rating:
Summary: Fun, Fantastic, and interesting read about strange places
Review: Jake Halpern takes on strange human habitats of our country and dives in to discover just why there are still people that live (or ever did live!) in these places. In each case, his chapter delves into the location, its uniqueness that makes it seemingly unhabitatible. These are places that are likely to be uninhabitable if not for human inventions like airplanes, air conditioning, indoor heat, and other modern marvels.
His stories take us around the country, from a small flood-prone town in North Carolina, an incredibly isolated village (though it seems more like a commune) in Alaska, to the Mailbu Hills where among the luxurious wealth live a family of ranchers that continue to fight the region's frequent firefighters on their own. In each locale, Halpern spends a significant time there, and often stays over for a few days with people who are braving the odds to live in these extreme locales. This allows him to dig deep into their rationals for continuing to live in such strange places. For example, he spends time with a woman in a very isolated spot in Alaska who is trying to stay hidden from her husband. For others, such as an old man in NC, that is where he was born and raised and lived his whole life, for him there is simply nowhere else to go. These stories are funny, poignant and interesting. Each makes for a very interesting read and through the set of chapters (where each is like a story of its own) the reader gets to see just how strange and weird our country and its people can be... but not just strange, just how brave and devoted they can be. This is a must read!!!
Rating: 
Summary: You Think You Have it Bad?
Review: Jake Halpern's "Braving Home" is a delightful little travel book that explores the question of why some people cling tenaciously to homes in some of the worst spots in the country. Halpern's journeys take him to a North Carolina flood plain, an active volcano in Hawaii, the Malibu country, a barrier island in Lousiana and an isolated outpost in Alaska. Along the way, he meets and befriends some very unusual, but very down to earth people. Halpern's likability is the key to the book's success. It allowed him to get his subjects to open up to his questions and gives the book a good natured tone. In the end, he tries to find some common ground that they all share, but it is the journey itself that makes the book worthwhile. Overall, a quirky and amusing book that will be best enjoyed by armchair travelers.
Rating:
Summary: You Think You Have it Bad?
Review: Jake Halpern's "Braving Home" is a delightful little travel book that explores the question of why some people cling tenaciously to homes in some of the worst spots in the country. Halpern's journeys take him to a North Carolina flood plain, an active volcano in Hawaii, the Malibu country, a barrier island in Lousiana and an isolated outpost in Alaska. Along the way, he meets and befriends some very unusual, but very down to earth people. Halpern's likability is the key to the book's success. It allowed him to get his subjects to open up to his questions and gives the book a good natured tone. In the end, he tries to find some common ground that they all share, but it is the journey itself that makes the book worthwhile. Overall, a quirky and amusing book that will be best enjoyed by armchair travelers.
Rating:
Summary: You Think You Have it Bad?
Review: Jake Halpern's "Braving Home" is a delightful little travel book that explores the question of why some people cling tenaciously to homes in some of the worst spots in the country. Halpern's journeys take him to a North Carolina flood plain, an active volcano in Hawaii, the Malibu country, a barrier island in Lousiana and an isolated outpost in Alaska. Along the way, he meets and befriends some very unusual, but very down to earth people. Halpern's likability is the key to the book's success. It allowed him to get his subjects to open up to his questions and gives the book a good natured tone. In the end, he tries to find some common ground that they all share, but it is the journey itself that makes the book worthwhile. Overall, a quirky and amusing book that will be best enjoyed by armchair travelers.
Rating:
Summary: Home, Dangerous Home
Review: There is no place like home. And you can be thankful that you have no place like the homes Jake Halpern has visited. He somehow became the "Bad Homes Correspondent" at the _New Republic_. He kept writing stories about towns being eaten by sinkholes, homes built over burning coal mines, homes where "Welcome Home" would have had a touch of sarcasm to it. In _Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales_ (Houghton Mifflin), the intrepid Halpern goes to live in five unpromising homes. He is in quest of the answer to why people would voluntarily take and keep homes in hellish or threatening areas. He does not find profound answers; they like their homes because these are their homes. He does, however, introduce us to some funny and strange characters, and shows us how they make themselves improbably at home. Princeville, North Carolina is a town inundated by Hurricane Floyd, but Thad Knight came back to his ruined home, and other citizens returned. Whittier, Alaska, is a peculiar town that consists essentially of one 14-story high rise, and about 200 people live there. They stay inside a lot of the time, because the temperatures are frigid and the winds are killers. To get to it, you have to drive through a tunnel over two miles long. Millie Decker is 82 years old, a former rodeo rider, and has an address that would be coveted by Hollywood hopefuls, in Malibu. She has not abandoned it for any of the infamous fires that regularly come her way, fighting each one by wet gunnysacks. Ambrose Besson is a Storm Rider on Grand Isle, Louisiana. Others take the bridge to the mainland, but he stays home and cooks with his fellow storm riders. Jack Thompson will book you a spell in his bed and breakfast in Hawaii. Of course, you have to trek across a live lava field to get to Jack's; "... there is always the possibility of taking a bad step and falling downward into an active lava tube." The lava is all around and may well take Jack's house someday. There isn't much they can really do by staying. It does not make much sense, to others, but of course it doesn't have to. In the epilogue of the book, Halpern goes back to these strange friends he has made, and tells them about each other, and finds that they easily sympathize with their fellows in the book. Jack, for instance, upon being told about Thad Knight, says, "It just sounds like another person who really likes his home and is willing to put up with whatever might come along with it." Most people are interested in conventionally making home life bigger and easier and inevitably more expensive and complicated. Read this amusing book about these mild kooks and realize that not all of them live in dangerous homes.
Rating:
Summary: Home, Dangerous Home
Review: There is no place like home. And you can be thankful that you have no place like the homes Jake Halpern has visited. He somehow became the "Bad Homes Correspondent" at the _New Republic_. He kept writing stories about towns being eaten by sinkholes, homes built over burning coal mines, homes where "Welcome Home" would have had a touch of sarcasm to it. In _Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales_ (Houghton Mifflin), the intrepid Halpern goes to live in five unpromising homes. He is in quest of the answer to why people would voluntarily take and keep homes in hellish or threatening areas. He does not find profound answers; they like their homes because these are their homes. He does, however, introduce us to some funny and strange characters, and shows us how they make themselves improbably at home. Princeville, North Carolina is a town inundated by Hurricane Floyd, but Thad Knight came back to his ruined home, and other citizens returned. Whittier, Alaska, is a peculiar town that consists essentially of one 14-story high rise, and about 200 people live there. They stay inside a lot of the time, because the temperatures are frigid and the winds are killers. To get to it, you have to drive through a tunnel over two miles long. Millie Decker is 82 years old, a former rodeo rider, and has an address that would be coveted by Hollywood hopefuls, in Malibu. She has not abandoned it for any of the infamous fires that regularly come her way, fighting each one by wet gunnysacks. Ambrose Besson is a Storm Rider on Grand Isle, Louisiana. Others take the bridge to the mainland, but he stays home and cooks with his fellow storm riders. Jack Thompson will book you a spell in his bed and breakfast in Hawaii. Of course, you have to trek across a live lava field to get to Jack's; "... there is always the possibility of taking a bad step and falling downward into an active lava tube." The lava is all around and may well take Jack's house someday. There isn't much they can really do by staying. It does not make much sense, to others, but of course it doesn't have to. In the epilogue of the book, Halpern goes back to these strange friends he has made, and tells them about each other, and finds that they easily sympathize with their fellows in the book. Jack, for instance, upon being told about Thad Knight, says, "It just sounds like another person who really likes his home and is willing to put up with whatever might come along with it." Most people are interested in conventionally making home life bigger and easier and inevitably more expensive and complicated. Read this amusing book about these mild kooks and realize that not all of them live in dangerous homes.
Rating:
Summary: Home, Dangerous Home
Review: There is no place like home. And you can be thankful that you have no place like the homes Jake Halpern has visited. He somehow became the "Bad Homes Correspondent" at the _New Republic_. He kept writing stories about towns being eaten by sinkholes, homes built over burning coal mines, homes where "Welcome Home" would have had a touch of sarcasm to it. In _Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales_ (Houghton Mifflin), the intrepid Halpern goes to live in five unpromising homes. He is in quest of the answer to why people would voluntarily take and keep homes in hellish or threatening areas. He does not find profound answers; they like their homes because these are their homes. He does, however, introduce us to some funny and strange characters, and shows us how they make themselves improbably at home. Princeville, North Carolina is a town inundated by Hurricane Floyd, but Thad Knight came back to his ruined home, and other citizens returned. Whittier, Alaska, is a peculiar town that consists essentially of one 14-story high rise, and about 200 people live there. They stay inside a lot of the time, because the temperatures are frigid and the winds are killers. To get to it, you have to drive through a tunnel over two miles long. Millie Decker is 82 years old, a former rodeo rider, and has an address that would be coveted by Hollywood hopefuls, in Malibu. She has not abandoned it for any of the infamous fires that regularly come her way, fighting each one by wet gunnysacks. Ambrose Besson is a Storm Rider on Grand Isle, Louisiana. Others take the bridge to the mainland, but he stays home and cooks with his fellow storm riders. Jack Thompson will book you a spell in his bed and breakfast in Hawaii. Of course, you have to trek across a live lava field to get to Jack's; "... there is always the possibility of taking a bad step and falling downward into an active lava tube." The lava is all around and may well take Jack's house someday. There isn't much they can really do by staying. It does not make much sense, to others, but of course it doesn't have to. In the epilogue of the book, Halpern goes back to these strange friends he has made, and tells them about each other, and finds that they easily sympathize with their fellows in the book. Jack, for instance, upon being told about Thad Knight, says, "It just sounds like another person who really likes his home and is willing to put up with whatever might come along with it." Most people are interested in conventionally making home life bigger and easier and inevitably more expensive and complicated. Read this amusing book about these mild kooks and realize that not all of them live in dangerous homes.
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