Rating: 
Summary: Pure American Fun!
Review: "Passing Gas" is a photographic journey through about sixty oddly named towns during the course of 38,000 miles on the back roads of the United States. Gary Gladstone makes a point of photographing a representative person from each town to help capture the mood in that small part of America. The results are some beautiful photos taken in such unusually named towns as Crapo, MD, Yum Yum, TN, and Boogertown, NC. Gladstone is a very gifted photographer, and his narration and description of the places and people he discovered is to be savored. You will laugh with him, and occasionally feel a bit of pathos, too. This is a truly unique collection of original photographs that most anyone with a sense of humor will enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Pure American Fun!
Review: "Passing Gas" is a photographic journey through about sixty oddly named towns during the course of 38,000 miles on the back roads of the United States. Gary Gladstone makes a point of photographing a representative person from each town to help capture the mood in that small part of America. The results are some beautiful photos taken in such unusually named towns as Crapo, MD, Yum Yum, TN, and Boogertown, NC. Gladstone is a very gifted photographer, and his narration and description of the places and people he discovered is to be savored. You will laugh with him, and occasionally feel a bit of pathos, too. This is a truly unique collection of original photographs that most anyone with a sense of humor will enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Classical Gas
Review: A fun coffeetable book with great stories and photos alike. Takes you to all of those oddly (aptly?) named places in America that you'd never visit on purpose but often wondered what went on there and what are the people really like? Truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to some of our neighbors in these United States.
Rating: 
Summary: What happened to the other 20,939 shots?
Review: Gary Gladstone's neat idea to photograph residents in some of the oddest named places in the US makes an interesting book. Most of the places are tiny towns or less and only needed a weird name to be included. I'm not sure why Flushing, a pretty big place in an even bigger place, New York, was included though. Each place has a spread with the text and small map on the left-hand page and a photo on the right-hand page. The photos are really good too, great color and compositions. The text, also written by Garry Gladstone, is fun to read and gives you a flavor of the people and places he visited but the little colored maps are next to useless, it would have been far better to have included ZIP codes or highway numbers for those readers who want to find these places on a map. I have just spent a pleasant afternoon finding most of them by using DeLorme's 'Street Atlas USA' CD-ROM, just by putting in the place and state name. The real disappointment to me are the single photos on the right-hand pages. After travelling 38,000 miles in nine trips over five years and taking 21,000 photos surely we should get more than one per place? Nearly all of them are close-ups of people and look as if they could have been taken anywhere. There are a few exceptions, Lovely, PA and War, WV show a little of the area behind the head and shoulders of the people photographed. I would like to see more of these heartland of America places, a street scene or a store, diner, garage, a few houses, a highway sign naming each place. It's not as if there is no space, the text and photos on each spread leave masses of white space (designers call this working white) in this rather over-designed book. 'Passing Gas' is a great idea but I wish I could have seen many more of the 21,000 wonderful photos Gary Gladstone took on his travels.
Rating:
Summary: You'll Laugh Until It Hurts
Review: I have this book on my family room coffee table and even though I've read it cover to cover at least twice now, I still get a big smile every time I see it there. Why, well how about the concept of God having a bar code check out lane on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania? I've been down that road at night and after reading Gladstone's description of the PA Dept of Transportation's paint test area, I laughed until it hurt. It's great photography with writing that leaves you wanting to read and see more of the same.
Rating:
Summary: You'll Laugh Until It Hurts
Review: I have this book on my family room coffee table and even though I've read it cover to cover at least twice now, I still get a big smile every time I see it there. Why, well how about the concept of God having a bar code check out lane on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania? I've been down that road at night and after reading Gladstone's description of the PA Dept of Transportation's paint test area, I laughed until it hurt. It's great photography with writing that leaves you wanting to read and see more of the same.
Rating: 
Summary: Trying before buying is a good idea
Review: I heard a radio article about this and it sounded like the perfect Father's Day present. I found only favorable reviews here, so I ordered it. If, instead, I had flipped through it at a bricks and mortar store, I would not have purchased it. There are plenty of towns with funny names. In some cases, the author was unable to find a good explanation for the name. I can see how that would be difficult since he was usually in each town for only a short time. However, in places he found nothing memorable to photograph, he should have struck those towns from the list. Many of the towns were just names on a map, so there was no building or sign to photograph. In these cases the author found local residents willing to stand in front of nothing and provide exaggerated grins, or policemen willing to pose beside their cars at roadside. The author ruined an already mediocre project by disrespecting the local residents. The condescending remarks, couched in attempted humor in the final pages, are unforgiveable.
Rating:
Summary: SERIOUS Fun, Don't Pass This Up!
Review: I heard Gary Gladstone talk about this project on NPR's Weekend Edition and started laughing immediately. When I ordered the book and read the stories and laughed at the images, I wasn't disappointed. (I'm still laughing.) This is one funny look at America and Americans. Can you believe there are real estate agents trying to sell property in Stinking Point? There is a Police Officer with a radar gun pointed at you in Good Grief, Idaho? Gladstone visited about 60 hysterically named towns and made a portrait of a citizen who lives there. He shows these real people in really funny named towns as both warm and funny. Gladstone's America smiles at itself in the pictures and in the stories where he tells about how these silly names were picked for the towns.
It's a great read! ---Wallace Moon
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Entertaining!
Review: It's great to see that there's still some small-town America left, and that there's someone with the desire to spend five years documenting it. I was pleasantly surprised with the excellent, humerous writing that accompanies the photos. I think the choice to photograph the people in the towns adds a personal touch in a way scenery alone couldn't do. Through the text and photos you actually get a sense of being there. I have an extensive collection of books on Americana, roadside attractions, and the like, and highly recommend Passing Gas!!
Rating:
Summary: Gary's Passing Gas is Great Americana
Review: My wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Gary as he traveled through America. He is exactly what this book represents- thoughful, caring, classic, passionate, interesting, and definately entertaining. We sat in our kitchen while he flipped through his book and, with each perfectly crafted story, poured out his love for American people and their stories. We laughed at and enjoyed every page. We really appreciated the opportunity to reflect on our own life and Gary's vision of America's richness. His book's pictures and stories are an American treasure. Do not pass on this American Highway.
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