Rating: 
Summary: Deeply felt journey of places and people
Review: Blue Highways is like a mug of hot coffee on a chilly morning. It is warm, reassuring, and thoroughly optimistic. A sense of freedom, of curious exploration, and of serendipity dominates this book. Blue Highways weaves stories of everyday people, living far from the coasts and major metropolitan areas on which we too often focus. The people tell their stories, and Least Heat-Moon listens. There are some great stories about the journey, and driving, and things like that, but really, the book is about the people he meets. The photographs are a wonderful bonus.Refreshingly, and despite (or perhaps because of?) his own education, Least Heat-Moon does not brand these people as hicks or hillbillies, and he does not call their towns dumps or make jokes about inbreeding. He has respect for his subject -- which is always the mark of a great nonfiction writer. If you've ever dreamed about having more time to talk to that person you saw in a small town somewhere.... this is the book for you. There is a bit of Garrison Keillor in Least Heat-Moon: the gentle folksy manner of a highly educated person who has small-town roots, and a sense of humor that is sometimes teasing, but never vicious. The downside of this is that some readers may find the narrative style, and what passes for a plot, to be boring and monotonous. Nothing "exciting" happens in the book if you're looking for Hollywood-style explosions, car chases, or sex scenes. But if you enjoy looking at undiscovered places, and talking to regular people, well, there's hardly anything more exciting than Blue Highways.
Rating: 
Summary: WORST BOOK EVER WRITTEN!!!
Review: (Make that star rating up there NEGATIVE 5 stars) I can't believe I'm actually taking the time to write this for such an awful book, but I read all of the other reviews here and I can't understand why everyone thinks this book is so incredible. I thought it was the most uninteresting, torturous book I have ever read. If this book is any indication of what Heat-Moon's personality and his English classes were like, I understand why he was laid off (and why his wife cheated on him!). 400-something pages of grueling, thick, unconnected text ruined my entire summer and destroyed any previous desire that I might have had to travel cross-country. I would not recommend this book to anyone; I think it should be destroyed.
Rating:
Summary: Definitive low buck trip
Review: Quite a magical book. The author is not a speed seeker intent on racing his way around the back roads of America, he follows a spiritual journey. The glue which holds together this book are the many remarkable characters the author happens upon. His reflections and accounts have a quietly moving, philosophical quality. I have found myself travelling through the same parts of the America with his obervations lodged in my memory and it is all the more remarkable for it! Unlike many other road books, he injects humor and color into even the most dull parts of journey. It's a book written with a great deal of care and craft - not your average tour guide. Some have said that the book ranks with "On the Road" and "Travels with Charley", I would agree with that.
Rating: 
Summary: Yawn...
Review: I'm a wanderlusting kind of person, but by halfway through this book, I found myself yawning. It's well written, but not interesting enough to keep my attention. While many stories within the book are interesting, there's too much down time. Of course, I can recognize that this is the truth about journeys, but this book isn't an attention grabber.
Rating:
Summary: My all-time favorite. #1 book ever!
Review: This book has everything interesting to me: religion, travel, commentary, wisdom, and author intimacy. Since reading this book, I compare every new read to it. Nothing has ever stacked up to this. Heat-Moon brings us from Columbia, MO, where his whole life is collapsing before his eyes, all the way around the country, and back again to Columbia, with a new interest in his life, new insight and wisdom. He has no perminant companions, gets called racial names, finds a bug in his car he befriends (for a short while), and cares for a hitch-hiking preacher. This book is literally breathtaking.
Rating:
Summary: The Journey Is Everything
Review: i finished reading this book last night,after taking it little by little, the past month...some books are not easy, this one is a labyrith and like a woman demands your complete attention...when i finished, i felt as if i had finished the journey with Moon, met the characters and saw the wide open spaces, and walked away knowing that there was more to america than atm machines, golden arches, and cell phones... although this book was written almost twenty years ago, it would not feel out of place in 2000; so much of this country has become skyscrapered, MTV'd and dot-commed...i smiled everytime Moon talked about looking for a Resteraunt with 5 calenders because you knew he was going to get a great meal...he uses pop culture references for clever, even comic effect, it is through his words, that he's telling us that he is taking more than a journey, that he has become don quixote, trying perhaps to bring back the lost america that can only be found in small towns... the fact that he made this trip in a van with very little money and sheer guts tells you about the wonder of the human spirit...this book is unsentimental...many times throughout the story, Moon himself wondered if the journey was worth continuing, and yet he continued, knowing that by travelling on the roads he would discover his true self... a traveller carries no compass; the only direction he follows is the one that lies within his heart...the traveller knows that its not about reaching the destination, its the journey the journey is everything...
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books of all times
Review: I read this book when I was a teenager and it gave a lot of respect for "rural" America and its values. I read it again as a young adult and this time enjoyed it for its literary style. I recently read it for the third time, and it makes me want to travel and enjoy more of our America before this kind of experience is gone. I gave it to my sister for Christmas, as she recently retired, bought a Winnebago and now travels the blue highways full-time. Wish I was her.
Rating:
Summary: I only wish....
Review: I only wish that I could travel around the country as Heat-Moon did. While reading this book, I kept having to resist the urge to pack some clothes, forget about work and just hit the road.......
Rating:
Summary: INSPIRING AND INVITING
Review: After reading this book about a man's journey across our country, my husband and I were inspired to set out on our own across the U.S. journey and had only two rules: 1) No main highways and 2) we could see anything within a fifty mile radius of whichever "blue" highway we chose. It is in large part due to William least Heat-Moon that we were able to make our journey so memorable. We, too, wanted to pleasure in the people of this great country; the ordinary folks who are the heart of the nation and the reason for this nation. Mr. Heat-Moon is truly a writer of what really is and his humor and soft style make the reading so easy. How could I not journey on to PrarieEryth and River Horse and anything else he will share with me....and you. A fine writer with a fine sense of the real heart of the earth and its people.
Rating:
Summary: A Necessary Reassurance
Review: Blue Highways is proof that innocence can still be found within the borders of America, and its path is streaked in blue lines on your maps. Next time the nightly news gets you down, read an excerpt or two from this book, and you will be reassured that not only did a better time exist in America, but can perhaps still be found in the places to which Least-Heat Moon ventured. In Blue Highways, you will meet people who offer their beds, dinner tables and wisdom without expecting anything in return, you will meet Least-heat Moon's desire to find himself through the benevolence and experiences of other people, you will meet life in America they way it really was, the way it really is. Open this book, take the trip Least-heat moon took, you won't just meet other people, you will meet yourself.
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