Rose Aguilar reads from "Red Highways"

A San Francisco radio host grown tired of media stereotypes, Rose Aguilar held an auction to raise money, bought a van, and set out on a six-month road trip through the red-state South and West to find out what voters and non-voters really care about.

Along the way, she met pro-choice Republicans, an evangelical conservative bishop who now preaches inclusion in Tulsa, OK, a woman who changed her politics after running a domestic violence shelter in Jackson, MS, a hunter in Montana who is thinking about leaving the conservation movement to fight for gay rights in Montana, and green Republicans.

Equal parts travelogue, political reportage, and personal discovery, Red Highways challenges conventional wisdom, gives a voice to people we rarely hear from, and calls for a more thoughtful and productive dialogue between Red and Blue America. Now that the election is over, it's time to build coalitions!

“Red Highways is riveting -- I could not put it down. Alive with the voices of real people, it is both heartening and heart wrenching, both enraging and inspiring, full of insights and information. If you want to understand our country, and care about its future, read this book!”
-Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations and The Chalice and The Blade

“Red Highways takes us out of our personal 'Green Zones' to taste the diverse complexity of so-called conservative states, and challenges stereotypes reinforced by the corporate media. For mindless drivel from a pundit, watch CNN; for a clear view of what people of various political ideologies in the U.S. want, think, and believe, read this book.”
-Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq

“Straight-ahead reporting on a road trip into the heart of Red State America for urban liberals who cannot (or dare not) make the tour themselves. Full of surprises.”
-Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War

Aguilar breaks shallow stereotypes by traveling through states that usually vote Republican—Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, and Montana—to talk to people of all political stripes about the issues they truly care about and what they expect from politicians.

Sections include:

*Domestic Violence Changed My Politics
*The Last Abortion Clinic in Mississippi
*Conflicted Christians
*Who Supports the Troops?
*Segregated Sundays
*Overworked and Underpaid
*Off the Front Lines and Forgotten
*Green Republicans
*From Poverty to Politics
*Native America

About the author:

Rose Aguilar is a radio host and journalist from San Francisco. She is a contributor to the book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland. She hosts Your Call, a daily public affairs radio show on NPR-affiliate KALW 91.7 FM, writes for Alternet.org, and offers political analysis for the BBC.

Your Call airs weekdays from 11 am – noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz:
http://www.yourcallradio.org/

Additional Praise:

“The ‘red’ state of Idaho is a hotbed of opposition to the Patriot Act. The ‘blue’ state of Connecticut sends ardent backers of the war in Iraq to Congress. America is neither so red as Republicans would imagine, nor so blue as Democrats hope. It is, in fact, a rich, complicated, at times frightening, at times reassuring shade of purple that Rose Aguilar captures not with the jaundiced eye of a political commentator but with the nuance of a novelist.”
-John Nichols, political writer, The Nation

“Red Highways is a trip through the USA’s byways, far beyond what the author calls “the media’s obsession with stereotypes.” Rose Aguilar takes us along as the rubber meets the road—and guides us through a remarkable quest for human substance instead of media clichés.”
-Norman Solomon, author of Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State

“Rose Aguilar brings curiosity and compassion to this beautiful story of a diehard liberal’s journey into the soul of middle America.”
-Harvard University Professor Linda Bilmes, co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War