Description
Of the 60 million pickups on U.S. highways today, just 1 in 8 was bought for work purposes. The remaining 54 million are what truck dealers call "lifestyle purchases." Does the pickup impulse spring from some deep, organic longing? For agrarian roots, for simpler times, for a driving experience larger than life?
The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is a memoir about the complex role pickups have played in Fred Haefele's life and in American culture at large. Growing up near the GM truck plant in Flint, Michigan, young Haefele was delighted by these centaur-like vehicles. In his adult life as an arborist, teacher, and father, pickups bore him through hard times and disaster, high adventure, triumph, and love. Through his tenure with twelve trucks, Haefele recounts his experiences with tree climbing and academia, masculinity and motor culture.
For Haefele, pickup trucks hold a unique place in the American psyche-equal parts fantasy steed and dray horse, they're avatars of the American spirit. The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is, like his trucks, uniquely free-spirited: love story, blue-collar writer's tale, and motor-head memoir.
About the Author
Fred Haefele is a writer, teacher, and retired arborist. He is the author of the award-winning motorcycle memoir Rebuilding the Indian (Bison Books, 2005) and the nonfiction collection Extremophilia. Haefele's work has appeared in Outside, Wired, the New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, Montana Magazine, and other venues, and he has written documentaries for the PBS American Experience series. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife, Caroline Patterson.
Reviews
"What better way than a memoir about pickup trucks to forge from steel, rubber, and enamel paint a rumbling portrait of an individual American life. . . . [This is] a brilliant, compelling, and wryly humorous road trip through the motorized heart of the American soul."-Peter Stark, author of Astoria and Gallop toward the Sun
"Ain't just trucks. Also chainsaws and typewriters, canoes and climbing rope, a distant dad and an undying dream, love and sex and marriage and children, failure and perseverance and mortality. Haefele delivers a three-quarter-ton load of nontoxic masculinity that smashes expectations to reveal something universal, let's call it the soul: soaring, striving, suffering. What a joy to ride along with a master at the height of his powers, hitting his stride after the decades of fits and starts he recounts with deadpan glee, now disarmingly humble-and humbled. A life fully lived, a tale exquisitely told."-Mark Sundeen, author of The Man Who Quit Money and Delusions and Grandeur
"It's clear that Fred Haefele loves Montana as much as he loves old pickups. This memoir serves as a cultural history of a writer, a state, and the wheels that got him around. If you take The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks for a ride, you won't be let down."-Steven Rinella, author, podcast host, and founder of MeatEater
"A great book, by a masterful practitioner. I marveled at the writing. Laughed out loud at the predicaments and antics of the dusty tree-climbing writer. Was humbled by a wise human's insights, humility, and warmth. I envied him his amazing life, wished and hope to live something similar in the American West. Now I will try to."-Robin McLean, author of Pity the Beast and Reptile House
Book Information
ISBN 9781496242280
Author Fred Haefele
Format Paperback
Page Count 212
Imprint University of Nebraska Press
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is a memoir about the complex role pickups have played in Fred Haefele's life and in American culture at large. Growing up near the GM truck plant in Flint, Michigan, young Haefele was delighted by these centaur-like vehicles. In his adult life as an arborist, teacher, and father, pickups bore him through hard times and disaster, high adventure, triumph, and love. Through his tenure with twelve trucks, Haefele recounts his experiences with tree climbing and academia, masculinity and motor culture.
For Haefele, pickup trucks hold a unique place in the American psyche-equal parts fantasy steed and dray horse, they're avatars of the American spirit. The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is, like his trucks, uniquely free-spirited: love story, blue-collar writer's tale, and motor-head memoir.
About the Author
Fred Haefele is a writer, teacher, and retired arborist. He is the author of the award-winning motorcycle memoir Rebuilding the Indian (Bison Books, 2005) and the nonfiction collection Extremophilia. Haefele's work has appeared in Outside, Wired, the New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, Montana Magazine, and other venues, and he has written documentaries for the PBS American Experience series. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife, Caroline Patterson.
Reviews
"What better way than a memoir about pickup trucks to forge from steel, rubber, and enamel paint a rumbling portrait of an individual American life. . . . [This is] a brilliant, compelling, and wryly humorous road trip through the motorized heart of the American soul."-Peter Stark, author of Astoria and Gallop toward the Sun
"Ain't just trucks. Also chainsaws and typewriters, canoes and climbing rope, a distant dad and an undying dream, love and sex and marriage and children, failure and perseverance and mortality. Haefele delivers a three-quarter-ton load of nontoxic masculinity that smashes expectations to reveal something universal, let's call it the soul: soaring, striving, suffering. What a joy to ride along with a master at the height of his powers, hitting his stride after the decades of fits and starts he recounts with deadpan glee, now disarmingly humble-and humbled. A life fully lived, a tale exquisitely told."-Mark Sundeen, author of The Man Who Quit Money and Delusions and Grandeur
"It's clear that Fred Haefele loves Montana as much as he loves old pickups. This memoir serves as a cultural history of a writer, a state, and the wheels that got him around. If you take The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks for a ride, you won't be let down."-Steven Rinella, author, podcast host, and founder of MeatEater
"A great book, by a masterful practitioner. I marveled at the writing. Laughed out loud at the predicaments and antics of the dusty tree-climbing writer. Was humbled by a wise human's insights, humility, and warmth. I envied him his amazing life, wished and hope to live something similar in the American West. Now I will try to."-Robin McLean, author of Pity the Beast and Reptile House
Book Information
ISBN 9781496242280
Author Fred Haefele
Format Paperback
Page Count 212
Imprint University of Nebraska Press
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
