{"title":"Series: Culture Trails: Adventures in Travel","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"pilgrimage-to-dollywood-by-helen-morales-9780226796680","title":"Pilgrimage to Dollywood","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA star par excellence, Dolly Parton is one of country music's most likeable personalities. Even a hard-rocking punk or orchestral aesthete can't help cracking a smile or singing along with songs like \"Jolene\" and \"9 to 5.\" More than a mere singer or actress, Parton is a true cultural phenomenon, immediately recognisable and beloved for her talent, tinkling laugh, and steel magnolia spirit. She is also the only female star to have her own themed amusement park: Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Every year thousands of fans flock to Dollywood to celebrate the icon, and Helen Morales is one of those fans.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003ePilgrimage to Dollywood\u003c\/i\u003e, Morales sets out to discover Parton's Tennessee. Her travels begin at the top celebrity pilgrimage site of Elvis Presley's Graceland, then take her to Loretta Lynn's ranch in Hurricane Mills; the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville; to Sevierville, Gatlinburg, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park; and finally to Pigeon Forge, home of the \"Dolly Homecoming Parade,\" featuring the star herself as grand marshal. Morales's adventure allows her to compare the imaginary Tennessee of Parton's lyrics with the real Tennessee where the singer grew up, looking at essential connections between country music, the land, and a way of life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt's also a personal pilgrimage for Morales. Accompanied by her partner, Tony, and their nine-year-old daughter, Athena (who respectively prefer Mozart and Miley Cyrus), Morales, a recent transplant from England, seeks to understand America and American values through the celebrity sites and attractions of Tennessee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis celebration of Dolly and Americana is for anyone with an old country soul who relies on music to help understand the world, and it is guaranteed to make a Dolly Parton fan of anyone who has not yet fallen for her music or charisma.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47072353190124,"sku":"9780226796680","price":41.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20195083482268.jpg?v=1765096292"},{"product_id":"spiral-jetta-by-erin-hogan-9780226348469","title":"Spiral Jetta","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eErin Hogan hit the road in her Volkswagen Jetta and headed west from Chicago in search of the monuments of American land art: a salty coil of rocks, four hundred stainless steel poles, a gash in a mesa, four concrete tubes, and military sheds filled with cubes. Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. \u003ci\u003eSpiral Jetta\u003c\/i\u003e is a chronicle of this journey.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA lapsed art historian and devoted urbanite, Hogan initially sought firsthand experience of the monumental earthworks of the 1970s and the 1980s—Robert Smithson’s \u003ci\u003eSpiral Jetty\u003c\/i\u003e, Nancy Holt’s \u003ci\u003eSun Tunnels\u003c\/i\u003e, Walter De Maria’s \u003ci\u003eLightning Field\u003c\/i\u003e, James Turrell’s \u003ci\u003eRoden Crater\u003c\/i\u003e, Michael Heizer’s \u003ci\u003eDouble Negative\u003c\/i\u003e, and the contemporary art mecca of Marfa, Texas. Armed with spotty directions, no compass, and less-than-desert-appropriate clothing, she found most of what she was looking for and then some.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e“I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out . . . or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In \u003ci\u003eSpiral Jetta\u003c\/i\u003e, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn’t magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing.”—Tom Vanderbilt, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e“The reader emerges enlightened and even delighted. . . . Casually scrutinizing the artistic works . . . while gamely playing up her fish-out-of-water status, Hogan delivers an ingeniously engaging travelogue-cum-art history.”—\u003ci\u003eAtlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e“Smart and unexpectedly hilarious.”—Kevin Nance, \u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e“One of the funniest and most entertaining road trips to be published in quite some time.”—June Sawyers, \u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e“Hogan ruminates on how the work affects our sense of time, space, size, and scale. She is at her best when she reexamines the precepts of modernism in the changing light of New Mexico, and shows how the human body is meant to be a participant in these grand constructions.”—\u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47072364462316,"sku":"9780226348469","price":33.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/15712973482268.jpg?v=1765098094"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/series-culture-trails-adventures-in-travel.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}