The Man Who Walked Backward
An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery, the story of a Texas man who, during the Great Depression, walked around the world -- backwards.
Like most Americans at the time, Plennie Wingo was hit hard by the effects of the Great Depression. When the bank foreclosed on his small restaurant in Abilene, he found himself suddenly penniless with nowhere left to turn. After months of struggling to feed his family on wages he earned digging ditches in the Texas sun, Plennie decided it was time to do something extraordinary -- something to resurrect the spirit of adventure and optimism he felt he'd lost. He decided to walk around the world -- backwards.
In The Man Who Walked Backward, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery charts Plennie's backwards trek across the America that gave rise to Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, and the New Deal. With the Dust Bowl and Great Depression as a backdrop, Montgomery follows Plennie across the Atlantic through Germany, Turkey, and beyond, and details the daring physical feats, grueling hardships, comical misadventures, and hostile foreign police he encountered along the way. A remarkable and quirky slice of Americana, The Man Who Walked Backward paints a rich and vibrant portrait of a jaw-dropping period of history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Great Depression's rampant unemployment sparked countless record-breaking attempts; Amelia Earhart's famed transatlantic flight, for example, but also desperate novelty acts that captured the public's attention. Montgomery's cheerful narrative focuses on the latter, specifically one perpetrated by the ever-optimistic Plennie Wingo, who, having lost his businesses after being busted for selling alcohol during Prohibition, set out in 1931 to walk backward around the world, hoping that he could cash in by shilling for businesses along his way. Wingo's adventures through the Dust Bowl ravaged South, Bulgarian archaeological sites, and even 1931 Berlin, which was obsessed with new politician Adolf Hitler, see him stroll backward through many of the era's historically significant events. The small-town Texan had a knack for marketing, but it is his genuine interest in people regardless of race, color, or religion that shines through: he befriends a black family in Pennsylvania and serendipitously enjoys tea with Queen Maria of Yugoslavia. Montgomery corroborates Wingo's own written account with multiple news stories from places along the 8,000-mile route, making it all the more striking when discrepancies suddenly arise between Wingo's account of his Turkish adventure, which resulted in a mysterious source of money, and that of the U.S. government, which investigated him over the money. After a year and a half, he returned home claiming success. Writing for casual readers, Montgomery keeps the focus on the human interest narrative, resulting in a light, enjoyable, telling of Wingo's walk backward into the record books.
