Audiobook17 hours
The Last Open Road
Written by Burt Levy
Narrated by Greg Beastrom
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this audiobook
It's like no audio book you've ever listened to! Re-imagined by the author as a 1950's-style radio play, the audio presentation of B.S. Levy's The Last Open Road features professional Hollywood voice actors in the major roles, amazing and authentic sound effects, period music and a cast of over 40 players, including many famous motorsports personalities. The Last Open Road audio book won multiple awards as “The Best Motoring Book of the Year,” and several reviewers—including non-gearheads—have called it the most entertaining and unique audio book ever.The print edition of The Last Open Road was originally self-published in 1994 after being turned down by major fiction publishers, but earned rave reviews in both the mainstream and motoring press and has become a genuine cult classic on the motorsports and collector-car scenes. It's also been used in high school and college-level English classes and is on the recommended reading lists at many libraries and book clubs.Set in the spring, summer and fall of 1952, it's an entertaining and oft-hilarious coming-of-age tale told by an engaging, 19-year-old New Jersey gas-station mechanic named Buddy Palumbo, whom several reviewers have likened to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. Buddy's a true working-class hero whose mean-spirited, bullying father is a union shop steward at a big chemical plant in Newark, and he wants Buddy to work there, too. But Buddy hates the place, and really wants to hang around the corner gas station—Finzio's Sinclair in Passaic—and learn how to fix cars from the tough, combative, ex-Marine hard-hat diver named Butch and tentatively flirt around with Old Man Finzio's voluptuous, spirited and occasionally acid-tongued niece, Julie Finzio.Then the station's top customer, a street-wise, several times-divorced, Cadillac-driving scrap-yard owner/wheeler dealer named Big Ed Baumstein (who may or may not be mob-connected) buys himself a new Jaguar XK120 sports car, and Buddy has to learn how to care for it. Which naturally involves runs to the Jaguar dealership in Manhattan run by the slick, stylish, shifty and unscrupulous ex-pat Brit named Colin St. In the process, Buddy and Big Ed are drawn inexorably into the toney, upper-crust, dangerous and occasionally decadent world of open-road sports car racing at places like Bridgehampton, Long Island, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin and Watkins Glen, New York.It's a wild, road-trip adventure through the America of 1952—before the Interstate Highway System, national motel chains and fast-food restaurants—and all the history in the book, from the real characters, events and machinery to the news headlines and social culture of the period, are presented exactly as they were, but as seen through Buddy's amazed, wide-open and oft-blinking eyes. As the reviewer for the Fort Worth Star Telegram put it:“The characters weave in and out of a story that features classism, elitism and racism, that is about triumph and tragedy, and right and wrong...a rich, compelling story that deserves a wide audience.”
Related to The Last Open Road
Related audiobooks
Aloha Wanderwell: The Border-Smashing, Record-Setting Life of the World's Youngest Explorer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lost Constitution Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jackson Hole Journey Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Man Most Driven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To the South Seas: A Wild 1929 Family Adventure to the Galapagos Islands Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Spanish Fly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lincoln Letter Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Clovis Dig Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Klondike Stampede Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Gold Rush: A Tale of the Klondike Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSealand: The True Story of the World's Most Stubborn Micronation and Its Eccentric Royal Family Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Broken Places Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outspan: Tales of South Africa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Inquisitor: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Old Man and the Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Project Namahana: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trout: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFidelis: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Apache Shadow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Breaking Wave Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Millionaires' Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jungle Peace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Salt, Sweat, Tears: The Men Who Rowed the Oceans Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Machiavelli Covenant: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sudden Rain Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Coming of Age Fiction For You
Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tom Lake: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The People We Keep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5GO AS A RIVER: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perks of Being a Wallflower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Berry Pickers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Honey and Spice: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5West with Giraffes: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Missing Girls: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Gatsby Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wife: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If We Were Villains: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mary Jane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maame: A Today Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Half Moon: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Home: the most moving and heartfelt novel you'll read this year Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Orchard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers in the Attic: 40th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Last Open Road
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews