100 Years on the Road The Traveling Salesman in American Culture

"Timothy Spear's study is a fitting obituary on a once proud if maligned occupation, but it unconsciously illustrates a trap that historians are prone to fall into. He has immersed himself in his sources so long that he has imbibed their colour and style. He writes like a salesman, in a high-flown rhetoric that buttonholes the reader like an Ancient Mariner and compels him to listen until the eyes glaze over. The hype is palpable, but it has one merit: it proves his most important point, that his compatriots are all salespersons now."Spears, Timothy B. is the author of '100 Years on the Road The Traveling Salesman in American Culture' with ISBN 9780300070668 and ISBN 0300070667.