The Motel in America


Book Description

In the second volume of the acclaimed "Gas, Food, Lodging" trilogy, authors John Jakle, Keith Sculle, and Jefferson Rogers take an informative, entertaining, and comprehensive look at the history of the motel. From the introduction of roadside tent camps and motor cabins in the 1910s to the wonderfully kitschy motels of the 1950s that line older roads and today's comfortable but anonymous chains that lure drivers off the interstate, Americans and their cars have found places to stay on their travels. Motels were more than just places to sleep, however. They were the places where many Americans saw their first color television, used their first coffee maker, and walked on their first shag carpet. Illustrated with more than 230 photographs, postcards, maps, and drawings, The Motel in America details the development of the motel as a commercial enterprise, its imaginative architectural expressions, and its evolution within the place-product-packaging concept along America's highways. As an integral part of America's landscape and culture, the motel finally receives the in-depth attention it deserves.




Hotels of North America


Book Description

From the acclaimed Rick Moody, a darkly comic portrait of a man who comes to life in the most unexpected of ways: through his online reviews. Reginald Edward Morse is one of the top reviewers on RateYourLodging.com, where his many reviews reveal more than just details of hotels around the globe -- they tell his life story. The puzzle of Reginald's life comes together through reviews that comment upon his motivational speaking career, the dissolution of his marriage, the separation from his beloved daughter, and his devotion to an amour known only as "K." But when Reginald disappears, we are left with the fragments of a life -- or at least the life he has carefully constructed -- which writer Rick Moody must make sense of. An inventive blurring of the lines between the real and the fabricated, Hotels of North America demonstrates Moody's masterly ability to push the bounds of the novel.







RED Hotel


Book Description

When a bomb rips the faƇade off the Kensington Hotel in Tokyo, dozens are killed and injured while one man walks calmly away from the wreckage, a coy smile playing on his lips. Former Army intelligence officer Dan Reilly, now an international hotel executive with high level access to the CIA, makes it his mission to track him down. He begins a jet-setting search for answers as the clock ticks down to a climactic event that threatens NATO and the very security of member nations. Reilly begins mining old contacts and resources in an effort to delve deeper into the motive behind these attacks, and fast. Through his connections he learns that the Tokyo bomber is not acting alone. But the organization behind the perpetrator is not who they expect. Facilitated by the official government from a fearsome global superpower, the implications and reasons for these attacks are well beyond anything Reilly or his sources in the CIA and State Department could have imagined, and point not to random acts of terror, but calculated acts of war. RED Hotel is an incredibly timely globe-trotting thriller that's fiction on the edge of reality.




Lame of Thrones


Book Description

From Harvard's legendary humor publication comes an outrageous, uproariously funny parody of Game of Thrones, in the tradition of their previous bestselling parody book classics Bored of the Rings, Nightlight, and The Hunger Pains. An affectionate but take-no-prisoners send-up of the massive literary and television franchise, Lame of Thrones offers fans a way of reentering the fictional world they have come to love and merrily explodes all of its conventions -- as well as their expectations of the characters -- to hilarious ends. It may even leave you more satisfied than the actual TV ending of Game of Thrones. In fact, if it doesn't the Lampoon has really dropped the ball. Lame of Thrones will take you to Westopolis, where several extremely attractive egomaniacs are vying to be ruler of the realm and sit on the Pointy Chair. Our hero Jon Dough was a likely bet, but his untimely murder at the hands of his own men of the Night's Crotch has made that seem less likely. Will Dragon Queen Dennys Grandslam escape from her Clothkhaki captors and return to conquer the world? Or will she just get left in the desert counting grains of sand for the rest of the book? And what about Jon Dough's siblings? Will they be mentioned? Probably? Almost definitely, yes? It would be weird if they weren't prominent characters in the book, you say? To find out, read the book you wish George R.R. Martin would write but never will. The Lampoon -- the place where such comedy writers and performers as Conan O'Brien, Colin Jost, B.J. Novak, Patricia Marx, Alan Yang, Andy Borowitz and many more all got their start -- is ready to serve parody notice to the most entertaining, infuriating, and inescapable cultural phenomenon of the past decade.










Historic Dallas Hotels


Book Description

In Dallas's infancy, accommodations for the traveler arriving by stage or horseback consisted of boardinghouses or unfurnished rooms, but within 10 years of the city's founding, Dallas could boast about what is considered to be its first hotel: Thomas Crutchfield's log cabin and livery stable. As the village evolved from town to city, these early facilities were replaced with elegantly appointed hotels that rivaled those in New York or Chicago and established Dallas as a modern city. As the 20th century progressed, many older hotels were replaced with up-to-date facilities, and the rise of the automobile following World War II saw the establishment of dozens of motels and motor courts. There were accommodations for every type of traveler, and Dallas had established itself as a hotel town.




Hotel Transylvania Graphic Novel Vol. 3


Book Description

An all-new story taking place before and tying into the third Hotel Transylvania movie! Jonathan, yearning to be a part of the hotel business like his father-in-law, Drac, opens a motel in the Swiss alps. With the help of his wife, Mavis, and little Dennis, the family remodels a run down motel to tip-top monster shape! But after numerous mishaps, monsters won't even check in! Not even humans will check in! It's up to Jonathan to get to the bottom of the mystery and save Motel Transylvania!