Walden On Wheels On The Open Road From Debt To Freedom, De Ilgunas,. Editorial New Harvest, Tapa Blanda En Inglés, 2013

Descripción

In this frank and witty memoir, Ken Ilgunas lays bare the existential terror of graduating from the University of Buffalo with $32,000 of student debt. Ilgunas set himself an ambitious mission: get out of debt as quickly as possible. Inspired by the frugality and philosophy of Henry David Thoreau, Ilgunas undertook a 3-year transcontinental journey, working in Alaska as a tour guide, garbage picker, and night cook to pay off his student loans before hitchhiking home to New York. Debt-free, Ilgunas then enrolled in a master’s program at Duke University, not to is string_containing determinedrrow against his future again. He used the last of his savings to buy himself a used Econoline van and outfitted it as his new dorm. The van, stationed in a campus parking lot, would be more than an adventure—it would be his very own “Walden on Wheels.” Freezing winters, near-discovery by campus police, and the constant challenge of living in a confined space would test Ilgunas’s limits and resolve in the two years that followed. What had begun as a simple mission would become an enlightening and life-changing social experiment. Walden on Wheels offers a spirited and pointed perspective on the dilemma faced by those who seek an education but who also want to, as Thoreau wrote, “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

From Booklist *Starred Review* Most college students these days take burdensome, long-term loans for granted as the obligatory cost of earning their degrees. For recent University of Buffalo liberal-arts graduate Ilgunas, however, the sight of $32,000 printed in black and white on a Sallie Mae loan statement yielded a life-changing epiphany. Instead of remaining shackled to his low-wage job at a Niagara Falls Home Depot and rooming with his parents to better whittle away his debt, Ilgunas struck off to remote Coldfoot, Alaska, to get a taste of wilderness living while working as a cook and sometime nature guide. Many years, odd jobs, and escapades later, including hitchhiking across the U.S., paddling a canoe as a “voyageur” across Northern Canada, and joining a cleanup crew in Katrina-ravaged rural Mississippi, Ilgunas was finally debt-free. Yet a new epiphany led him back to college for a master’s degree. Inspired by Thoreau’s example of low-impact living, and determined to minimize housing expenses to avoid another mountain of debt, Ilgunas spent the last of his savings on a used vehicle he variously dubs the titular “Walden on wheels” or “a creepy red van.” Replete with colorful anecdotes and disarming wit, Ilgunas’ account is both a goad for chronic debtors and an irresistibly engrossing true-life adventure tale. --Carl Hays

Review Walden on Wheels [is] a remarkable memoir that manages to stay light on its feet while saying a great deal about the state of modern American society. Ilgunas is a rare and wonderful travel companion. Along the way, he describes natural phenomena so skillfully that you might be compelled to flee your desk and head for the hills, walking stick in hand. -Washington Post

Ilgunas penned the most readable of the tomes on education this year. Ilgunas lives [the educational crisis] and tells quite the adventure tale. His education - flawed and expensive as it was - pays off.-The Globe and Mail

[Walden on Wheels is] searching and ambitious-one of the best books Ive read this year. -LA Review of Books

Walden on Wheels is a funny and poetic tale of personal growth, suburban angst, and beef jerky. -A.J. Jacobs, author ofDrop Dead Healthy and The Year of Living Biblically

A thoroughly endearing account. -The Wall Street Journal

Replete with colorful anecdotes and disarming wit, Ilgunas’ account is both a goad for chronic debtors and an irresistibly engrossing true-life adventure tale. -Booklist, Starred Review

Walden on Wheels should be read by every student, as well as every elected official and candidate for office. -BizPac