Moreintelligentlife.com is the website of Intelligent Life magazine. Articles about Arts, Lifestyle, Travels, and Ideas

The publisher says: In recent years Gerry Hempel Davis has logged over 100,000 miles on America's highways and byways, stumbling upon sites that range from the trancendent to the ridiculous. Listed here are hundreds of her favorite resorts, spas, hotels, parks, diners, B&Bs, and shops. There's also many other less-easily classified attractions both grand and gauche, as small as a roadside fruit stand and as large as the Waldorf Astoria. Have a yen to see an ostrich farm while toodling along Arizona's Route 10? An urge to shop while leaving Birmingham, AL? A lust for consignment shops in the Florida Keys? Davis did too, and with style and wit she lets readers know where to stop and where to not. A Zagat for the inner Zingaro, 100,000 Miles covers places familiar and foreign, in the process offering fresh and fun perspectives on everything from hot springs to five-star hotels, bakeries to toy factories, bookshops to cowboy museums.

Details:
Title: 100,000 Miles: A Driving Diva's Guide to America's One-of-a-Kind Shopping, Eating, Touring and Sleeping Places
Publisher: Moonlight Publishing, LLC
Pub. date: Jan. 25, 2008
Author: Gerry Hempel Davis
Paperback; 352 pages
List price: $17.95
ISBN-10: 0977960331
ISBN-13: 978-0977960330

The publisher says: Follow the heartbeat of America through towering forests, undulating fields, pulsating metropolises and offbeat oases. Whether day-tripping from the Big Apple's core or dreaming of the California Coast, this definitive, award-winning guide inspires you to go the distance and discover the USA's very best. Discover and deconstruct -- in-depth culture and history sections offer political and paradoxical insights, while the arts section unveils America's top talents. My way or the highway -- full-color highlights, tailored itineraries and 140 killer maps lead you along and off the beaten track. Run for the hills -- escape the concrete jungles via the labyrinth of back roads, waterways and crest trails revealed in our authoritative outdoors section. Rest easy -- national park campsites, secluded B&Bs, five-star suites, the Heartbreak Hotel...our sleeping listings provide prime bedding for myriad budgets.

Details:
Title: USA (5th edition)
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications
Pub. date: March 30, 2008
Paperback; 1168 pages
List price: $28.99
ISBN-10: 1741046750
ISBN-13: 978-1741046755

The publisher says: Celebrated roving correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning and best-selling author Bill Geist serves up a rollicking look at some small-town Americans and their offbeat ways of life: "In rural Kansas, I asked our motel desk clerk for the name of the best restaurant in the area. After mulling it over, he answered: ‘I'd have to say the Texaco, 'cuz the Shell don't have no microwave.'" Throughout his career, Bill Geist's most popular stories have been about slightly odd but loveable individuals. Coming on the heels of his 5,600-mile RV trip across our fair land is Way Off the Road, a hilarious and compelling mix of stories about the folks featured in Geist's segments. Written in the deadpan style that has endeared him to millions, Geist shares tales of eccentric individuals, such as the 93-year-old pilot-paperboy who delivers to his far-flung subscribers by plane and the Muleshoe, Texas, anchorwoman who delivers the news from her bedroom (occasionally wearing her bathrobe). Geist also takes us to events such as the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival (celebrating an inspiring bird that survived decapitation, hired an agent and went on the road for 18 months) and Sundown Days in Hanlontown, Iowa, where the town marks the one day a year when the sun sets directly between the railroad tracks. Along the wacky and wonderful way, Geist shows us firsthand how life in fly-over America can be odd, strangely fascinating, hysterical, and anything but boring.

Details:
Title: Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America
Publisher: Broadway
Pub. date: May 6, 2008
Author: Bill Geist
List price: $13.95
Paperback; 288 pages
ISBN-10: 0767922735
ISBN-13: 978-0767922739