Essential Book of Pickup Trucks
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€21.99
A01=Fred Haefele
American West
Americana
arboriculture
Author_Fred Haefele
blue collar memoir
book about pickup trucks
Category=DNC
Category=WGC
Category=WTL
Chevrolet Apache
Creative Works
Creative Writing
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_travel
evolution of masculinity
Literature
Memoir
memoir studies
Montana memoir
motor culture
pickup truck memoir
pickups in American culture
Transportation
transportation memoir
travel writing
Travelogue
truck history
truck memoir
Product details
- ISBN 9781496242280
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2025
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Of the sixty million pickups on U.S. highways today, just one in eight was bought for work purposes. The remaining fifty-four 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.
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.
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.
