U.S. 1, America's Original Main Street

Winding through 14 states from Maine's northern tip to the Florida Keys, U.S. 1 ambles across woods, zips by beaches and straggles down the troubled streets of aging cities like Boston, New York, Richmond and Philadelphia. The road's 2467 miles are strewn with history: George Washington chopped down the cherry tree in Fredericksburg, Va.; New Haven, Conn., once the independent colony of Quinnipiack, was absorbed into the Colony of Connecticut in 1662. Prisons, Holiday Inns, old stagecoach routes, Civil War battles, bird sanctuaries and pristine coastal communities abound in the gracefully written essay by New York Times national affairs correspondent Malcolm. It's a delightful and revelatory journey through a lost America. The 72 duotone photographs by Straus, managing director of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, nicely capture the vagaries of life on the road, from a goat in a shopping mall to an automobile graveyard. (Oct.)