Rating: 
Summary: Incredible, don't pass it up!
Review: I came across this novel in a dusty box at a church's rummage sale five or six years ago. Distant places hold some kind of fascination for me, and when the back cover hinted at fantastic lands, I picked it up. Within pages I was hooked. I could see the charactors, the scenery. I felt like I was drinking with them in the sunken Torremolinos bar, in the chute running beside Harvey Holt, and I cried with Gretchen and Britta when Monica was found dead.
This novel is one of the most beautifully written I've had the pleasure of reading in a long time. I've read this many times over, and the thrill of it gets me every time. I'm sorry there isn't a sequel. I'd have liked to know what happened to everyone after they stopped "drifting." Whether this is Michener's best or not, I know I'll read it once or twice a year for a very long time.
Rating:
Summary: The Drifters
Review: I first read this book years ago when I was living "behind the iron curtain" in the former Soviet Union, and it touched me very deeply. I just wanted to do what its characters did -- get out of the place where I was unhappy and look for a happier world. I did manage to get out and find a happier place... Now, years after I first read the book, I am bying to read and "re-live" it again on a my trip to the places described in the book -- Torremolinos in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. It's a fascinating and rich story, happy and sad. Read it and it may also lead you to a happier place....
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: I grabbed this book from my roommate's bookshelf one day because I had nothing to read, but I never could have guessed at the effect this book would have on my life. I read this my senior year in college, and the book gave me the courage to travel on my own after school, an experience I have since treasured. I love all six characters, all extraordinary in some way, and I loved Harvey Holt and riding the bulls in Pamplona. This is a book for the travel bug, or just for someone who wants an unforgettable experience!
Rating: 
Summary: Great for Advanced Teens
Review: I read this book when I was in 8th grade and have read it every year since. It was a tremendously long book, but very well written. The Details were sometimes excrutiating but it was an excellent way to improve vocabulary. If you love reading down to earth adventures you will surely enjoy this book.
Happy Reading!
Rating:
Summary: Motivation to Travel
Review: My first "Long" Michner book which was as easy flowing of a read as his shorter novels. Michner writes characters and scenery so well that you will be motivated to go wherever the six young people go. With the combonation of this novel and "The Sun Also Rises" I was motivated to make the trip to Pamplona this summer. For the most part, Michner was right on!
Rating:
Summary: SLOW, BUT GOOD!
Review: Reading Michener is like a glacier flowing, it may be slow...but you can't stop it and it will make to where is has to go. The Drifters is something like that, the book is very well written and powerful but it can be slow at times. I will say that Michener has a great gift to tell a story and his characters are about as 3 dimensional as the guy next to you. This novel is very rewarding if you can just stick it out, and read to the end. I won't get into the characters, because the 40 reviews before me have done that.
Michener writes deliberately and all his words are unwasted, he is able to take many characters and have them move around the world with ease, I enjoyed The Drifters and it will make you want to visit some of the places they visited. The only flaw I saw was that he makes an Israeli/American Jew visit his friends in Morocco in 1971 ...that's just crazy.
Rating:
Summary: Truly a classic
Review: The Drifters is thought provoking and entertaining. If you are older you will feel nogstaltic for your younger days. The first half of the book sets up the stories on all the main characters who are all very interesting. We see what drove them to wind up in Spain in the resort town of Torremolinos. Once everyone is situated, we follow the group throughout their journeys to Pamplona, Southern Africa, Morroco, and Portugal. James Michener, who wrote this when he was about 60 or so, shows that he has a great understanding of the youth culture. Even though this takes place over 30 years ago, it did not seem dated as Michener captured youth's universal characteristics. My advice to anyone who is travelling around Europe, order this book right now and take it with you in your backpack!
Rating: 
Summary: Frightening read
Review: The drug overdose by the girl in Morocco shocking. The lonely
end. Revolutionary of the spirit is distasteful to me. Mitla Pass reminds me of the Columbia coming in. A microwave
onslaught, by one of my sources. Revolutionary of the spirit, sort of like political ante-natal
WIC, though no orange juice for elsewise children. The sharpness of orange juice against a sore throat, that
juice constant in sterile technique handling, not touching
the nozzle of the orange juice bottle, not talking or spitting
into it while the bottle is arrayed. One doesn't gag on the cheese necessarily.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Lil Hosea Mommie Yossarian The girl Frank wanted to show me at Vanderbilt, some thirty years ago, birthcontrol pills and television. The Drifters.
Rodale Press' Bicycling talking about the alternative, then
their snowpea recipe for a bicycling special.. presumbably,
then, no headache... None in the MADD. Alcohol not spotted
in the magazine, Bicycling. Why did Frank say she was
watching tv? I have a statement on barnesandnoble.com.. re: John Brunner's
Squares of the City. The two hundred three hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers in
a Mitla Pass Maginot line. Strange kill ratio. Less than two hundred American casualties,
many from a Scud. spotter,
truk island
Rating:
Summary: Seek Your Dreams
Review: This book changed my life. In 1986 I actually followed the characters travels through Europe. The goal of the trip was to find the Alamo bar in Torremolinos, Spain. Even though no one had heard of such a bar and it was not listed in any business or telephone directory I did what the characters did-I wandered through the city. At the end of a small alley was a hand scrawled sign that read "Alamo Bar". I followed the arrow and came to a tiny hole in the wall bar that had an upside down horseshoe over the door and a sign that said "Alamo Bar, open 8 til late". It seems that the people who ran the Alamo moved into a larger bar called the Stagecoach. According to the bartender, I was the second person who had found them because of the book. The other guy was from Poland and actually kissed the floor when he arrived. My copy of the book is still behind the bar waiting for the third visitor. Five years later I met a woman who had just come back from Europe and I asked her where she visited. She replied "Have you ever heard of a book called "The Drifters"? A year and a half later she became my wife. Read this book at the risk of changing your life too.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: This was my first Michener read, and I must say it was worth it. Though the book didn't take me by surprise when it came to the mindsets of the youth in the swinging sixties and seventies, it did leave me feeling a bit more educated about European and African culture and history. Also, what interested me was Michener's varying views of the future conveyed through his characters - there is more than a mention about the racial oppression suffered by the blacks in Africa, and hope that things would be much better thirty years hence - in other words, now. It made me think, and I don't think much has changed on that front. Drugs were as much a problem then as they are now, and I don't think any sensible individual would subscribe to the supposedly progressive views of the Swedish couple in Marrakech. On the whole, if you are looking for some food for thought apart from some good prose, pick this book up....your mind will tell you it's more than a sandwich from your local deli.
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