Coast to Coast: A Journey Across 1950s America

Written in what must be the heyday of the American Dream - before it became soured - this is Jan Morris's lighter travel through a different empire, inducing envy for not having experienced it ourselves and nostalgia for an America that has passed. The journey, undertaken when she was still James, is marvelously evocative and is as detailed as her other works. The travel narrative is as engaging as Theroux or Raban (with whom she is friends) with her particular eye for historical details that become almost prophecies. I recommend it as an ideal `entry point' to enjoying this historians writing for anyone not yet an aficionado and collector of her works.