Blue Highways: A Journey into America

“Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.” – William Least Heat-Moon

William Least Heat-Moon, a travel writer of European and Osage lineage chronicled this three-month long trip through the United States in 1978. To recover his sense of self and purpose following a failed marriage, he drove the secondary roads that The Rand-McNally maps designated in blue. Stopping at roadside cafes in small towns he had many fascinating and memorable encounters. His beautiful descriptions of north American landscape. This award winning book is in the same canon as Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and Kerouac’s On The Road.

Category:

Description

  • Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation’s backroads.
  • William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about “those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi.”
  • His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.