William Least-Heat Moon, writes of a journey taken away from the "interstates" of the human experience. In the near-forgotten places and continental corners he passes through, life manages to persist in ways that it does not in the change-racked "fast lane" so many of us are swept into. Nearly three decades have passed and the book is no less relevant in what it says about modernity: In the chain-store franchise, places increasingly appear like every other place, and local color and richness fades--or are bulldozed--into history.

Artistically, Blue Highways is a feast. Least-Heat Moon's poetic descriptions of landscape and mindscape are equaled only by his marvelous ability to capture the varied dialects of America.
Like any good travelogue, it endures, from honest look the author takes at himself and where his life is going— to pondering the big universal questions. And though there are no universal answers, this journey deserved the large audience that has embraced it and, by so doing, perhaps have asked themselves the same questions.