Small World: A Microcosmic Journey

I love true stories that detail a personal, spiritual journey and this book was a terrific example of that. Post 9/11 and post two children in 20 months, Herzog questions what kind of world we really live in. So, over the course of a summer, he travels nearly all of the 50 states and ties the world together without ever leaving the U.S. He finds the socioeconomic treasures he is hunting for in towns like Moscow and Siberia, Maine, Bagdad, Arizona and Jerusulem, Oklahoma. Considering his family life, it was a gutsy journey and his humor is present during all of his stops. He brings the reader to a hopeful and sunny place in what many of us view as a dismal world. It is a reminder that people all really want the same things in life and asks us to remember the simple things that mean the most. Highly recommended.

Not since Blue Highways have I read an American travel memoir as deftly written and engaging as Brad Herzog's SMALL WORLD. The author is rather unique in the world of travel writing in that he conjures up a clever itinerary taking him through a series of small towns and then manages to find great insight and exotic stories within these tiniest dots on the map.SMALL WORLD is creative nonfiction at its finest. Herzog has the detailed eye of a journalist, the evocative writing style of a novelist and the soul of a poet. Each chapter of the book is essentially an essay meshing geography, history, conversation and relevant philosophical tangents. Not only does Herzog manage to weave these elements together seamlessly, but the series of essays themselves form a cohesive narrative of his journey from beginning to end.The best travel narratives take you on a trip, but they also take you on a journey of self-examination. SMALL WORLD does this and more. It offers geography put into historical context. It provides tales of laughter and grief and anger and absurdity. It is a celebraton of the myriad American subcultures -- ranchers and farmers and artists and nudists and hermits and hillbillies -- without bias and with great affection for life's diversity. It is easy to for travel writers to poke fun at the locales they pass through -- and many do -- but it is much more impressive to write profoundly, as Herzog does.SMALL WORLD is about people surviving in the nation's nooks and crannies -- saving a town, protecting a river, perpetuating a lifestyle, maintaining their heritage, holding onto a dream. It is a fascinating examination of the state of the union, post 9/11. Buy this book, and enjoy the ride!

Eighteen years ago as his high school English teacher, I had the privilege of reading and grading the writing of Brad Herzog. Brad was an accomplished writer in high school and his published writing has lived up to the promise of those "A" papers about the Chicago White Sox. Since then, I have enjoyed his Sports 100, States of Mind, and, most recently, Small World: A Microcosmic Journey. I also have been pleased to come across articles by Brad in airline magazines.Brad Herzog's travel books, States of Mind and Small World, can stand proudly next to those of Mark Twain or John Steinbeck or even Jules Verne. In fact, Brad named his 21-foot Winnebago Rialta after Phileas Fogg, Verne's circumnavigator of Around the World in Eighty Days. As a twenty-first century traveler, Brad covered the United States in about 40 days in August-September, 2002. He visited small towns with international names like Rome (Oregon), Athens (New York), Paris (Kentucky) and Bagdad (Arizona). In each town (populations from 50 to 8000) Brad found ways to meet residents and learn their histories and prejudices. He introduces the reader to ranchers in southeast Oregon with definite views of the government's draconian environmental policies, to the workings of the famous Claiborne horse farm in Kentucky, to hippies in London, Wisconsin, and to nudists in Athens, New York, where Brad hesitantly went native. Dying mining towns like Congo, Ohio, and Bagdad, Arizona, have their spokesmen and the Hare Krishnas in Calcutta, West Virginia, get an even-handed treatment.In the introduction, Brad distinguishes between tourists and travelers: "It has been said that tourists leave home to escape the world, while travelers aim to experience it." With Brad's help the reader experiences a little-published side of the United States, things we don't see at Disney World or the Sears tower. When Brad matches his sometimes liberal views against those of residents who are scratching to make a living or have watched helplessly as natural or man-made forces have changed their lives, he doesn't always come out the victor. And he readily acknowledges his growing ambivalence about his previous certainties.One of Brad's strengths in writing is his ability to summarize the history of an area and make it relevant to the present day. The reader learns about Basque immigrants to Oregon, the running of a grain elevator, Dutch immigrants in Amsterdam, Montana, the devastating effects of racial discrimination in Cairo, Illinois, migrant workers in Mecca, California. Brad even met a modern-day Thoreau in Siberia, Maine--Donna Chase, who lived without electricity or even a phone until recently.This is a book to be tasted and chewed. Plan on taking time reading it with an atlas nearby to check on the directions in case you want to visit in person. Buy your own copy; you'll want to re-read this book. Helen Palmer

Brad Herzog takes readers on a descriptive tour of "famous" locations such as Athens, Jerusalem, Moscow, Mecca, Congo, London, Cambridge, Baghdad, Rome, etc without crossing any ocean. One wonders how Mr. Herzog accomplished his feat of visiting these locales yet not transverse by air or sea the Atlantic or the Pacific (except to Hawaii). Simply, he stayed inside the United States where he went from Cairo to New Madrid, Missouri or searched for David in Jerusalem, Arkansas. Mr. Herzog makes a powerful case that the states have plenty of interesting locations so that the vacationer might not ignore feeling that there is as much culture and history to absorb in Moscow, Idaho as in Moscow, Russia. The author makes the case that in deed there is plenty to see when one traces the three mile train from London to Cambridge, Illinois.Small World: A Microcosmic Journey is a delightful insightful look at the vast treasures waiting for Americans within their own nation for a lot less than going overseas. The book is written in such a way so that the casual reader gets a taste of a unique locale while being able to put the book down and pick up this fine reference tome another day (I read the book over ten days). The audience will picture Kerouac and Kuralt touring together with Herzog as their driver at places like Versailles and Paris.Harriet Klausner