The ultimate road book, and arguably the finest, Uneasy Rider forgoes the traditional blue highways and scenic nooks and crannies left behind in America's tidal wake, and travels instead on six-lane blacktop into the heart of our society today.

With Mike Bryan you're in the company of an adept listener and a funny, learned, and profoundly sympathetic man. His chosen beat stretches west from Texas to New Mexico and Arizona toward the City of Angels in the Golden State - the chimerical destination of any decent American pilgrim.

Along the way he uncovers much that is new and revelatory about our nation and fellow citizens, a hard-working, various lot including snake ranchers and state troopers, truckers and hitchhikers, motel-keepers and visionaries large and small. Fair hearing is given to one and all, whether wheeler-dealers, immigrants, border smugglers, or people who became near-aboriginals when the interstate turned Route 66 into outback.

And between these encounters Bryan contemplates history, both public - pioneering, roadmaking, assassination theories at Dealey Plaza, the oil business, agriculture, waste-dumping, gambling, you name it - and personal. The Bryan family comes from rural Texas, after all, though an ambivalent rootlessness has marked Bryan's own life - and is also, some claim, a defining characteristic for much of the population.