At once a travelogue and memoir, a literary history and extended exploration of nature, this book follows the footsteps of eight American writers, tracing their continuing influence on the national psyche. From Henry David Thoreau's Maine woods to Jack London's San Francisco Bay, Ernest Heminway's Upper Peninsula to Zora Neale Hurston's French Quarter, Mark Twain's Nevada territory and Willa Cather's Nebraska plains to Larry McMurty's Texas, the author guides readers across the well-travelled pages of America's literature and the well-read contours of the American landscape. This book provides insight into many of the books and writers that have explored and chronicled the American landscape, and have become an important part of the American collective unconscious.