(Non)-required reading

Before you get in your car and drive, it may be worth doing a little research.  We've got you covered: we recommend some guide books for travel planning, historical novels for cultural understanding or pure enjoyment, and various movies to get you excited about your trip.  

Guide Books

Buying books can get quite expensive, so let us know your experiences with the books below or add others we missed. Try getting new books that have overviews (like one book each for South and Central America) that will be up to date, and then look for used books on individual countries you are interested in. Alibris has a particularly good selection of used books available online.

• Lonely Planet: Mexico - Comprehensive travel guide on Mexico.
• Lonely Planet: Central America on a Shoestring - a good budget traveler's overview of Central America. The maps aren't great for drivers, but it's a good list of cheap hotels, food, and things not to miss.
• Lonely Planet: South America on a Shoestring - a good budget traveler's overview of South America. Likewise, the maps aren't great for drivers, but it's a good list of cheap hotels, food, and things not to miss.
• Rough Guide to Central America on a Budget Nicely compliments the Lonely Planet shoestring guide.
• Rough Guide to South America on a Budget Nicely compliments the Lonely Planet shoestring guide.
• Traveler's Guide to Mexican Camping - Book written mostly for the RV crowd, but good for anyone doing a lot of camping in Mexico.

Recommended Reading

• Road Fever : Tim Cahill reports on the road trip to end all road trips: a journey that took him from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in a record-breaking twenty three and a half days.
• 1491: A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.
• Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed: A careful and thorough account of the environmental and cultural fragility of civilizations, from present-day Montana to the toppled statues of Easter Island.
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: An indepth look at how many of the Latin American countries (and others) were duped, then robbed under the cloak of 'democracy' and free trade.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel :A global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.
• The Old Patagonia Express: Paul Theroux's travelog about taking trains from Boston, Massachusetts to Patagonia, Argentina in the 1970s.

(Book summaries from Powell's Books)

Recommended Movies

'Get in the mood for some steamy jungles, pristine beaches, banditos, and pre-Colombian culture.

• Motorcycle Diaries: Story of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's 1952 journey through South America with his friend Alberto Granado.
•  The Mosquito Coast: An eccentric and dogmatic inventor sells his house and takes his family to Central America to build an ice factory in the middle of the jungle.
• Maria Full of Grace:A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family (in Spanish).
• Apocalypto: The journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and destruction of his village.
• Cidade de Deus (City of God): Two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer (in Portugese)
• Zen and Zero: When five landlocked Austrians road trip from LA to Costa Rico, it becomes a comedy, a philosophical diversion, and an investigation of the myth of the surfer dude itself.
• Salvador: A journalist, down on his luck in the US, drives to El Salvador to chronicle the events of the 1980 military dictatorship, including the assasination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.
• El Norte: After the army destroys their village and family, Mayan Indian peasants, decide they must flee to "El Norte" ("the North", i.e., the USA). After receiving clandestine help and advice on strategies for traveling through Mexico, they make their way by truck, bus and other means to Los Angeles, where they try to make a new life as young, uneducated, and illegal immigrants.

(summaries from IMDb