Air America - An Odyssey of Travel, War and the Counterculture (1970-1974) (2013)
John C. ThompsonIn the course of the author’s nine month backpacking trip he reflects on student life at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and gives an accurate and honest account of low-budget travel in the Third World. His story also provides personal and multiple primary and secondary sources of information on the Cambodian War in 1974, a year that most military historians have largely neglected.
With over one hundred never-before-published photos, hand-drawn maps and ten pages of footnotes author John C. Thompson provides a thought-provoking and integrated account of his coming to age in the hectic, early 1970s. Backpackers, students of the Indochina War and baby-boomers who were part of the hippie phenomena will find "Asian Highway" of intense interest.
From the final blow-out of 60's radicalism on the “Strip” in Knoxville to hippiedom playing out on the slopes of the Himalayas and with vivid descriptions of war-torn Cambodia, "Asian Highway" provides tantalizing and fascinating insight into what constitutes pure freedom.