Mark Okrant, Oak Manor Publishing, 2006

Mark Okrant’s third book, Sleeping Alongside the Road, offers a retrospective on the American motel. At just five and a half inches square, Sleeping has been designed to recapture the flavor of the White Mountain Vistas travel booklets that L. Prang and Company made famous during the 1890s. The book uses stories told by past patrons and proprietors to place the evolution of the motel into the context of changes in the travel and tourism industry during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Okrant also uses the volume to caution that motels are an endangered genre of lodging that should be appreciated and patronized, not ignored. Mark Okrant is professor of geography and tourism development, and director of the Institute for New Hampshire Studies.—Marcia L. Santore