By George R. Stewart, Erwin Raisz (Maps)
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin
1953
311 pages
Hardcover edition.
In 1949 and again the following year, George R. Stewart made two cross-country treks on U.S. Route 40. All told, he spent almost four months on the road photographing and documenting the landscape and everyday life along the road. His purpose was to record what he saw as he passed. His record captured the grand and the mundane. The resulting book, U.S. 40, was published in 1953. Accompanying his 114 photographs were 92 interpretive essays written in an accessible and enlightening manner. It provides readers with an armchair view of a roadtrip across the continent.
The book was a minor success, selling about 20,000 copies, however, the book made a lasting impact on scholars who would later adopt J.B. Jackson's idea of studying roads as a form of place. Numerous writers including Larry McMurty, Thomas and Geraldine Vale and William Least Heat-Moon have all cited U.S. 40 as a major influence in their studies and writing.
U.S. 40 holds a special place in the world of odology being the very first non-marketing book ever written about a highway. Riding on the success of U.S. 40, Stewart turned his focus 90 degrees and wrote a similar book about a road trip from Circle, Alaska, to the jungles of Costa Rica - then the farthest limits of north-south automobile travel in North America. That book, N.A. 1, was published in 1957.
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Cover of U.S. 40.
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