In his latest book, The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today, journalist Ted Conover links a series of challenging first-person passages down roads with reflections on how this most extensive manmade artifact changes us all, both intentionally and not.

Ted Conover’s books mesh journalism, sociology, and personal experience beginning with Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes (1984) to Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, to his newest book, The Routes of Man.