The Last Stop: Vanishing Rest Stops of the American Roadside by Ryann Ford
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a clever concept, with great photos and beautiful landscapes for a wonderful book. Highway rest areas are, for the later part of the 20th Century, what diners and motels were for the middle of it. They are (and were) easy to take for granted until they start disappearing — which is what Ryann Ford noticed and led her to this project. Getting nostalgic about rest areas takes some getting used to, but the ways she frames them in the landscape makes them just as evocative of their era as the Route 66 sites are of theirs. Some of these are as prosaic as can be, but that doesn’t diminish their aesthetic impact. And some are really quite interesting as object.
Note that a fine companion to this book book is Christopher Herwig’s Soviet Bus Stops.