Road Sides

Born and raised in North Carolina, Emily Wallace is the art director and deputy editor for the quarterly journal Southern Cultures and a freelance writer and illustrator. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Oxford American, Southern Living, and other publications.

Before hitting the highway, tuck this amusing guide into the glove department to learn about the best and worst dining attractions in the South. (Augusta Chronicle) We live in the golden age of niche tourism, but Wallace…puts her stock more in the whys and hows of the way we eat, travel, and work…the emphasis is not just on what is being served, but what it says about us. (INDY Week) [A] delightful book…there can't be many travelogues-of-odd-vernacular this engagingly written, can there? Certainly none (other than Road Sides itself) authored by a woman with a master's degree in folklore, an author whose thorough and engaging descriptions of Southern regional standouts and culinary peculiarities are enhanced by her own full-color drawings. (Austin Chronicle) Emily Wallace combines two of America's favorite pastimes-eating and roadtripping-into one colorful collection. Using Wallace's guide as a map, readers can cruise around the South, hopping from one detour and destination to another enjoying tons of good food and fun factoids. (Nashville Lifestyles) Bursting with 140 colorful illustrations drawn by Wallace, Road Sides is an A to Z compendium of essential visits for a well-fed Southern road trip. (Arts & Sciences Magazine) [Wallace] canonizes the foods of the Southern road, in all their kitschy, diverse, delicious glory…[Road Sides has] a little something for everyone—an iconic New Orleans po' boy, the ties between NASCAR and moonshine, the real story of Harland (better known as Colonel) Sanders...it serves as a handy resource for anyone eager to get a taste of the gems that dot Southern roads. (The Local Palate) Road Sides is clearly aimed at a general audience of readers with its journalistic style of participant observation and whimsical illustrations, but Wallace makes use of her folklore training and scholarly connections in both the historical contextualizing of automobile culture and the critical lens with which she points out the good, the bad, and the ugly of Southern history and practice... What emerges from this wide-ranging investigation is [a] story of innovation, both technological and entrepreneurial, about the creative minds who came up with a new product or process or marketing strategy to adapt to a world that is changed irrevocably by car travel. (New Books in Food)

• IntroductionA. ArchitectureB. BillboardsC. CarsD. DirectionsE. EntertainmentF. FixinsG. GasH. HyperboleI. IconsJ. JunqueK. KudzuL. LandmarksM. Meat-and-ThreesN. NacketsO. OpenP. PackagingQ. QueR. RoadsS. StandsT. TunesU. UbiquityV. VacancyW. WindowsX. XXXY. YonderZ. ZealotsAcknowledgmentsSourcesIndex of Places