Quinta Scott, who lives in Saint Louis, received her B.A. degree from Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut.
She is the photographer of two other published books and the editor for a third. Along Route 66 also published
by the Univeristy of Oklahoma Press. Susan Croce Kelly, who lives in Chicago, received her B.S. degree from Purdue
University, West Lafayette, Indiana, and an M.A. degree in American History from Saint Louis University, Saint
Louis, Missouri. She is the author of many articles on local and regional history.
Review
"[Route 66's] appeal lies in the graceful way it explores the impact of that long black ribbon on the lives
of the people who lived beside it and in the book's explanation of how U.S.66 'became a highway the country could
not forget.'..Today, as this book's text and photographs emphasize, there's not much left besides the legend. The
two-lane blacktop has crumbled and most of the people who lived beside the old road have moved away or died. But
while the new interstates are faster and safer, it is impossible not to miss old Route 66. Fortunately, the words
and pictures of this delightful book preserve the memories of a road that ran through everyone's life."
--Wall Street Journal
"Route 66-the late, lamented American Main Street that ran from Chicago to the Pacific-is here given life
once again. Those who served its travelers for nearly 50 years (selling Indian artifacts, "hamburgs,"
and chunks of petrified wood, or renting rooms, patching tires, and digging the wounded out of head-on collisions)
offer memories both enthusiastic and touching. . . An enjoyable and rewarding book on a uniquely important road
that turned the heat up on the American melting pot."
--Library Journal
"Susan Croce Kelly and Quinta Scott spent seven years traveling the route from end to end, interviewing and
photographing the people and structures that gave old 66 its flavor. The text is carefully researched and well
written, and the 93 photographs (appropriately, black and white) provide convincing images of ordinary people and
places lacking the glamour of those at either end of the 2,200-mile-long line."
--Arizona Highways
"This book makes me want to take another trip out into that land where you tell time by the odometer and where
travel is an adventure instead of an ordeal. The land seems to be vanishing rapidly, elbowed aside by the superhighway
and franchised motels and restaurants, but in Quinta Scott's and Susan Kelly's fine book, it lives on."
--Americana
"The evocative photographs and interviews pay tribute to thousands of small businesses and the people who
fueled, sheltered, and entertained millions of travelers. This is a fascinating study of individual entrepreneurs
and the growth of advertising, as well as a paean to a vanished way of life."
--Booklist
University of Oklahoma Press Web Site, November, 2000
Summary
Scott and Kelly use oral history and photography as the basis for a human study of this country's most famous road. The stories and portraits are the biography of a highway, a legend, and a vanishing way of life. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
