Blue highways

This book makes me want to drop off the grid, pronto.

It's a great travelogue of the format “drive around the country, stop and talk to people wherever you go”, with a very meditative tempo to it. All of the vignettes are just the right length, and many are provocative without being diatribes or derailing. It's an important snapshot of America in 1975.

I read this back in the early eighties and immediately added it to my favorite reads of all time list.

Now, after completing my first reread, I would have to say that this remains a favorite. Pretty good book if it hangs in there almost thirty years later.

Heat-Moon travels America after losing his job and his wife in rapid succession. He takes to the blue highways, the roads on the map where few travel. He finds, for the most part, that solace and quiet companionship and time for reflection that he sought.