The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways

Abstract

I was over due for a road trip. It had been years since I'd last embraced that most cherished of American freedoms: to slide behind the wheel of a car equipped with a good stereo and comfortable seats , and head out into the country , be holden to no particular route, no time table , to grow inured to the road, the thrum of the tires , the warbling silence and thuds of a big truck's slipstream , the whistle of hot summer past the windows . To live off the contents of a cooler on the floor boards and whatever sustenance the road happened to offer .