TedConover

ALSO BY TED CONOVER Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing Whiteout: Lost in Aspen Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America’s Mexican Migrants Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes TO JAY LEIBOLD I began to see how the road altered not only the way people travelled, but how they perceived the world. —J. B. Jackson, The Necessity for Ruins CONTENTS Introduction One: Forest Primeval to Park Avenue Road or Not a Road? Two: Slipping from Shangri-La Road Ecology Three: The Road Is Very Unfair Double-Edged Roads Four: A War You Can Commute To Speed Up! Five: Capitalist Roaders Growing Broadway Six: Drive Soft—Life No Get Duplicate Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography INTRODUCTION He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.” —Frodo Baggins of his uncle, Bilbo, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring......