Rating: 
Summary: Kerouac with a purpose.
Review: Kenn Kaufman answers the question of what happened to all those scruffy kids who were hitching rides across America in the early 1970s. They grew up. In his case, this story of an epic quest to see more birds in a single year than anyone ever had before, lay in a box 25 years after it was written. Fortunately he decided to dust it off, clean it up and share it with us. I met Kenn once when I was on my own quest to see 400 birds in North America in a single year, about 15 years after he found 666 species, or 671, depending on whose rules you are using. He showed me my first Varied Bunting at the Patagonia Refuge. I got started on this road of bird listing after finding Jim Vardaman's book and reading it about a dozen times. Vardaman beat Kaufman's record with dollars, finding 699 in a single year. Probably Kaufman's book will inspire many more to take up the quest, for the simple reason that he's a far better storyteller. This is an adventure that goes far beyond bird watching. It is a lyrical book of the road, like Kerouac with a purpose. The music of trips remembered by a single song played to death by the AM stations comes ringing back over the years. I remember hitching from Missouri to New York State and hearing "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do," each time I got into a car. Kaufman tops that with the thunder of Jim Morrison's voice warning drivers who just picked him up, "There's a killer on the road." He transforms it into, "There's a birder on the road," but you can feel the discomfort of getting into cars in Southern states to that refrain. A high school dropout, lured by the bird quest at age 16, Kaufman's education about relationships came from statements of disillusion -- confessions to a stranger on an all night drive. It left him wary and ill-prepared for what might have been the real thing. His enduring relationship, the quest to see all those birds, is finally crystalized by a long- hair who listens to Kaufman's tale of why he is hitching from Arizona to New Jersey to see a non-descript shorebird, and lays a John Lennon line on him, "He's got to be good lookin' 'cuz he's so hard to see."
Rating: 
Summary: Living every birder's dream
Review: Kingbird Highway is a book that captures the imagination of birders certainly, but it is also a travel book and an excellently written narrative of a young man's journey into his passion and himself. The adventures and excitement of Kenn Kaufman's quest for his Big Year are presented in a captivating style that urges the reader to continue reading on into the night. Unfortunately, it's one of those books where you start to slow down toward the end because you just don't want your relationship with this story and this young man to be over. Kingbird Highway is one of the few books that I plan to re-read -- more than once!
Rating:
Summary: A great adventure
Review: Skillfully written and edited to perfection, this book is a joy to read. The story is a thrilling adventure that's hard to put down; plan on pulling an all-nighter when you read it. In one year, Kenn Kaufman traveled 80,000 miles, saw over 600 species of birds, and spent less than $1000 in doing so. I'm more of an armchair birder myself, content to see the world's birds in books, and I loved being taken along on this amazing journey without having to leave the comfort of my own home.
Rating:
Summary: In Search of Birds
Review: Some decisions just can't be justified by logic or reason. They come from a place inside us that won't be denied - that has an agenda all its own.And so it was for Kenn Kaufman, a bright young high school student who quit the academic life (bored stiff) to explore the one thing that had grabbed and held his attention from an early age - BIRDS. Kauffman's approach to birding is simple. Work just enough to accumulate funds for travel, then hit the road with your thumb extended and a backpack full of field guides, the cheapest food you can find, and the rudiments of self-hygiene. When I tell you that Kauffman once ate dry cat food to save money, you will understand why the subtitle of this book is "a natural obsession that got a little out of hand." Kauffman is definitely eccentric, though delightfully so, and it quickly becomes apparent that he is in search of more than birds on his journey. Kauffman's travels take him back and forth across the North American continent, up to Alaska, down into Mexico and occasionally out to sea, where in addition to finding birds he connects and makes friends with a large network of equally obsessed birders. Meet Ted Parker, the wonder kid of the birding world described as a "super being." Then there are Peli and Rose Ann who give him the nickname Kingbird, and the Tuscon Five, Kauffman's band of birding buddies who are willing to drop their college studies at a moment's notice to follow him into the field. Other memorable characters include a falconer turned conservationist, Diana who drives Kauffman to the local dump in search of Mexican crows, and Charlie who "...had not held a regular job in 30 years." In addition to unusual characters, you will be introduced to the world of "Lists," "Big Days," "Christmas Bird Counts," and "Big Years." Kauffman's own Big Year (a year in which a birder tries to identify as many bird species as possible) is the premise for most of this book, and provides him with the impetus he needs to sort out his dreams, priorities and ambitions. Finally, you will hear of the inevitable unplanned adventures that occurred as Kauffman hitched his way across the states. Highlights include weathering a rare snowstorm in the Carolinas with his buddy Scott, being stranded on Fort Jefferson island, and a Christmas Bird Count that almost gets him drowned. My one difficulty with the book, given that I am not a birder, was Kauffman's tendency to rattle off the names of the birds he tracked down. Lacking the knowledge to really understand what he was seeing and getting excited about, the names began to blur together into one long, incomprehensible string for me. However, whenever Kauffman stopped to talk about a bird he particularly admired, the descriptions were always vivid and memorable. You will come away from Kingbird Highway appreciating not only the birds, but the 17-year old who had the self-awareness and guts to pursue a different sort of dream. Don't miss this book
Rating:
Summary: Superb and enthralling!
Review: Superb and enthralling account of a teenage Kenn Kaufman's 1973 bird listing exploits using hitchiking as his mode of transportation. A must read for any birder or lister.
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Summary: This review appeared in LIVING BIRD magazine, Winter 1999
Review: THE KINGBIRD HIGHWAY I first read Kenn Kaufman's KINGBIRD HIGHWAY, a year and a half ago, on a trip to Churchill, Manitoba. It was such a compelling story, I knew immediately that I had to review it. Although I run the risk now of being the last reviewer in America to cover this book, KINGBIRD HIGHWAY is too good to pass up. It's a cut above anything written so far by an American birder and will surely be regarded as a classic in future years. KINGBIRD HIGHWAY tells the tale of how, at age 16, Kenn Kaufman dropped everything and hit the road in search of birds. It's a remarkable story. There he was: honor student; president of the student council-obviously a gifted kid with a bright future in college. But his overwhelming yearning to learn everything he could about birds could not be suppressed or even postponed. He dropped out of school and began hitchhiking back and forth across the continent, searching for birds and adventure. "I knew that, back at home, kids my age were going back to school," wrote Kaufman. "They had the clang of locker doors in the halls of South High in Wichita, Kansas. I had a nameless mountainside in Arizona, with sunlight streaming down among the pines, and Mexican songbirds moving through the high branches. My former classmates were moving toward their education, no doubt, just as I was moving toward mine, but now I was traveling a road that no one had charted for me . . . and my adventure was beginning." Kaufman learned to survive on pennies a day (he budgeted himself only one dollar a day for food). He sold blood plasma twice a week, for five dollars a pint. He went to temporary employment agencies and would work by the day, until he had $50, then hit the road again. Sleeping outside in all kinds of weather, finding shelter under bridges and overpasses, he followed his unstoppable desire to find birds and learn more about them. He even started eating cat food: "a box of Little Friskies, stuffed in my backpack, could keep me going for days," he wrote. Besides being a great coming of age book and a road adventure yarn, KINGBIRD HIGHWAY provides a remarkable insight into a transitional era in American birding-the early 1970s. At the beginning of that decade, no one had yet reached the 700-species mark in their North American life lists-in fact, only the best birders had passed the 600-species mark. And the record for the most birds seen by a birder in a single year had stood at 598 since 1958, when ace British birder Stuart Keith completed his record-smashing North American big year. In terms of the up-to-date information available for birders, many things had changed by 1971. Informal hotlines had begun springing up across the country. New bird-finding books, such as Jim Lane's guides, were providing intricate instructions on how to find birds in various regions. And, at some birding hotspots, taped telephone messages were providing weekly updated information on rare birds seen locally to anyone who called. With this budding network of bird-information sources, a new big-year record was there for the taking. And Kaufman wanted desperately to be the one to achieve it. He made his first try in 1972, but barely a month into his big year, he found that the record had already been topped by another boy wonder, Ted Parker, who had seen an incredible 626 species in 1971. Kaufman's great adventure began in earnest on New Year's Day, 1973, when he tried once more to begin a big year, setting his sights firmly on Ted Parker's record. But it turned out that he was not the only one with that thought in mind. For the entire year, he had to compete toe-to-toe with Floyd Murdoch, a graduate student who got to travel to wildlife refuges all over the country to get information for his doctoral dissertation (and amass bird sightings). I won't tell you who won-in some ways, it doesn't matter. As Kaufman discovered in his lengthy travels, the journey is more important than the destination. KINGBIRD HIGHWAY was a great surprise to me. Though I've always considered Kenn to be a good writer, and everything I've read of his has been excellent, journeyman work, KINGBIRD HIGHWAY is something more. In this book he not only captures the soul of birding but also the spirit of youth. The writing is lyrical, bordering on poetry at times. I hope that Kenn authors many more books of this kind in the years ahead.
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Summary: A teenager hitchhikes 69000 miles in 1973 birding quest.
Review: The mere thought of letting their 16 year old son or daughter hitchhike across the country is enough to horrify the modern American parent. Ken Kaufman's true story of his 1973 69,000 mile hitchhiking adventure from Kansas to Key West to Alaska and everywhere in-between contains enough hair-raising episodes to confirm our collective case of shivers regarding that method of travel. Still....somewhere between the point that the incredulity wears off (how could his parents let him do that??!!) and the point where the admiration for the boy sets in..somewhere in there...the reader becomes hopelessly captivated. Right in the middle of the 1970's, unknown to all except a few lucky souls who chanced across him, there came this simple, honest, determined young voyager. His holy grail was to see all of the different bird species that he possibly could in one year. But do not be confused..this is a tale about much more than birding. I give it a 'must read'.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring.
Review: This book will make you wish you had never started a "life list." I found the endless "I went here and saw such and such" really tiresome. It lacks any personal insight. It made me realize how really pointless all this listing and competition among birders is.
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