I accessed a digital review copy of this book from the publisher.
The book follows the author as he travels along stops from the Green Book. It includes interviews with people who grew up using the Green Book.
The book was an interesting analysis of the historic era that created the Green Book and the various interviews.

If you saw the recent movie The Green Book, you have a general idea of the importance of these historical volumes. Alvin Hall undertakes a road trip using routes outlined that Black families and individuals might have traveled in the pre-civil rights decades. In interviews, various people share their recollections and experiences of travel during those years. The book helped this reader better connect with the struggles faced by Blacks attempting common travel and the assistance that the Green Books provided.

This book is amazing and wonderful. If you like to listen to people talk about different events from a topic, family reunion style, then this one is for you. Hall leaves the stories in the teller's own words, allowing the nuances of a wide cast to come through. Despite talking about some of the problems, the focus is on the positive. How do you talk about your vacations?

I have always taught the Green Book and have my students use it to plan their own road trip dueing that era. It's a really fun assignment and this brings so much more lived experience and context to those road trips. I learned so much from these stories - tangible and intangible.

An important book for all of us to read to learn about our recent and not so recent history and how it impacts our modern day lives. Highly recommended

Historical and very interesting - the journey kept me interested as I read along their travels. The personal stories and photos are the best part of the book - they really bring it all together and make it more meaningful.

I really learned a lot reading this book. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a temporary, digital ARC in return for my review.

On the surface, it is about a publication called The Negro Motorist Green Book, which from 1936-1966 provided guidance to black travelers who were not welcome at most (white) roadside establishments. On a deeper level, though, this book is about America’s long-standing white supremacy and the ways in which black Americans have supported each other and thrived despite the oppression under which they lived. For instance, one person interviewed by Hall recounts having a gun pulled on him just for asking if a gas station had restrooms, while – at the same time – many also recounted road trip rituals, like shoe box lunches, lovingly. This book is about so much more than black travel patterns, but looks at events like the Great Migration, redlining, and Jim Crow laws to establish why it was so crucial (and difficult) for black Americans to form their own communities where they could collectively resist the institutional and social oppression of white supremacy. I highly recommend this book, *especially* to white readers looking to gain a better understanding of structural racism in this country.

This book's value is not in what the author has to say--which is generally banal and offers little other than a sense that readers should find his experiences life-changing--but in the many interviews and other first-hand testimony about the Green Book and how Blacks traveled by car in the US, particularly in segregated places during Jim Crow. This information, which the author does not usually interrogate or explain beyond his own experiences and limited knowledge, is of great value. But there are other studies of the Green Book that provide much better contextualization and more extensive research for readers interested in it.

This is an incredible book that retraces the experience of Black Americans driving when Jim Crow Laws and Sundown Towns explicitly existed (but eerily some of the same threats and fears still exist when "driving while black." This book is based on a podcast series and has interviews with people who remember utilizing "The Green Book" which was a Black traveler's guide to where they can stay such as in people's homes due to segregation. The book also does a great job describing issues of systemic racism such as voter suppression and redlining. This book is definitely a worthwhile read. At times I felt the editing could have been tighter as well as the structure - sometimes felt repetitive and was not always a smooth trajectory as you read. But again, these are just minor critiques because this is such an important read.
I recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper One for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A fascinating account of the history of driving while Black in America. I knew about the Green Book but not about how it came about and what it included--and the author of the Green Book whose family name is indeed, Green. Alvin Hall takes a couple of journeys retracing some of the more popular routes and reflects on what it must have been like--what has changed and what hasn't changed. For those of us unfamiliar with the kind of travel that Black Americans were taking back then, this is an eye opener. There are many small details that perk the reader's interest along the way.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It is a piece of history that needs to be more widely known.

Alvin Hall's Driving the Green Book is an exploration of the history and life experiences of those who used The Negro Motorist Green Book. Hall shares the history of the publication of the travel book and also shares the lived experiences of those who engaged with the book. There are ten chapters plus the introduction. Hall shares in the introduction that this project was part of a radio documentary as well as a series of podcasts. The idea is more traveling through time than space so this is more of an oral history put to paper, a history lesson more than a travelogue. As Hall explains, this is a book about his journeys with The Green Book and the "lived experiences" of African Americans who lived "in different states, cities, and towns when the travel guide was being published."

Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance by Alvin Hall tells a scary and very relevant not-too-distant history of how a majority of Americans have had to travel this country. In many communities, The Green Book was the only safe map to travel with. A must for every library.

Alvin Hall shares his journey of driving many of the places highlighted in the Green Book. This is not a travelogue but more of a historical look at what it meant to travel the US in a car as an African American throughout the 20th century. He intersperses that look with the experiences of those who lived it. He juxtaposes it with those who don't drive the Green Book but experience the same racism. This is an important read. Hall argues, at the end of the book, for the inclusion of the Green Book and people's rea-life experiences in history books and every school across the county. He's right. If we don't teach this history, we are doomed to repeat it. Thank you to #HarperOne and #NetGalley for the opportunity to preview #DrivingtheGreenBook

This book is so engaging and well researched. It gives an insider view of experiences most people have never had, nor could they ever imagine. It's a history lesson that resonates today and shows that maybe America hasn't come as far as it thinks it has.