One of the engineering triumphs of the modern age, as well as one of its greatest social disasters, the U.S. interstate highway system affected everyone from urban tenement dwellers to isolated prairie farmers. It didn't just move dirt; it moved entire communities. It fueled the great American love of big cars and the open road, not to mention bland suburbia and thousands of strip malls. Lewis neither celebrates nor condemns this concrete and steel ribbon. Rather, he offers a lively look at the characters who fought for, and later against, the system.

Tom Nord