Books
by Jonathan Raban
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Old Glory |
Raban rides the river from Minneapolis to New Orleans. A romantic journey? Yes but fraught and dangerous too. The Mississippi is just there in all her old glory, rolling down through middle America with her cargoes of wheat, cotton, iron and coal. Raban gets the better deal. Following the river by land, it can rarely be seen for the hundred feet high levees. This old favourite, like the river, is both timeless and eternal.
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 79 Winter 2016) |
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Passage to Juneau |
Raban sails single-handed from Seattle to Juneau through the middle passage. This is a wistful journey for an elderly travel writer with acute sense of place and history. Modern times have deprived former thriving seaboard communities. There are echoes in the author’s private life (no spoilers) which are made even more poignant by threading into his travels the fortunes of Captain Vancouver who charted the American Northwest in the late C18th. Evocative stuff!
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 120 Spring 2026) |
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