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On The Open Road from Debt to Freedom
New Harvest
May 2013
On Sale: May 14, 2013
320 pages
ISBN: 054402883X
EAN: 9780544028838
Kindle: B00B77UDWU
Paperback / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
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
jour¬ney, 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,
determined not to borrow 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.”
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