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ARTS, SPORTS, & CULTURE
AA09322
Theroux, Paul THE LONG WAY HOME (Smithsonian, Vol. 40, No. 6, September 2009, pp. 70-77)
Full Text under the title “Taking the Great American Roadtrip” [HTML format]
Paul Theroux is one of the masters of travel writing, but he opens this article for Smithsonian admitting that he has never seen a great deal of his own country. He begins his cross-country road trip in Los Angeles, heading to his home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts with the plan that the journey is the destination. Along the way, he makes many of the iconic stops of the American road trip -- the Las Vegas strip, the Red Rocks of Arizona, the memorial to victims of the Oklahoma City terrorist attack, and the blues bars on Memphis’ Beale Street. He finds barren deserts, ferocious weather, and pastoral scenes which he likens to similar places he has seen in distant countries. But at the end of his more than 5,400 kilometer journey, Theroux observes that he experienced “not a moment of alienation or danger, no roadblocks, no sign of officialdom, never a second of feeling I was somewhere different.”
HISTORY
RELIGION
MAPPING THE GLOBAL MUSLIM POPULATION.
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. October 8, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 62 pages]
A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.
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