The road that made America A modern pilgrim's journey on the great wagon road

The Great Wagon Road was the path taken by early American settlers from their first arrival in the Pennsylvania colony down through the Carolinas to Georgia. As such, the road and its environs played a large part in American history, from the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War to the Underground Railroad and the Civil War. It played a part in the lives of major historical figures, from George Washington to Robert E. Lee. Author Dodson grew up in North Carolina in a historically minded family, learning about the road from an early age. In his later years, he decided to make a pilgrimage along the road, from Philadelphia to the Carolinas, to learn more about the road's history and his family's historical connection to it. In the process he meets a wide variety of people for whom history is still alive and resonant. While the details of Dobson's personal odyssey might be a bit too bucolic for some, the history he learns fills out the picture of America's evolution and is both fascinating and enlightening.

Memoirist and sports writer Dodson (The Range Bucket List) offers a charming look at the Great Wagon Road, the mid-18th-century route by which American colonists from the North settled the mountainous backcountries of the South. Inspired by the knowledge that his own ancestors traveled the Wagon Road to settle in the Carolinas, Dodson retraces the route from Philadelphia to Augusta, Ga. Along the way, he visits spots ranging from a colonial-style tavern in Philadelphia--where he eats a "period-correct supper"--to the Pennsylvania site of a 1763 massacre of dozens of unarmed Conestogas by the "Paxton Boys," a settler mob that operated with the collusion of local authorities. Dodson notes a resonance between this period--the era of James Buchanan, whose chaotic administration led the nation "to the brink of civil war"--and today. He also moves through history as he travels, reflecting on America's trajectory from the Revolution (he visits a North Carolina battlefield where the British faced off against the backcountry's "Overmountain Men") to the Civil War (the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens was born into a Wagon Road family) and the civil rights movement (he recalls his father bringing him, on his seventh birthday, to witness the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in). With its many perceptive reflections on the movements of history, this edifies. (July)

An amiable amble along Appalachian-fronting blue highways. "The Great Wagon Road is probably the least known historic road in America," writes Dodson, better known for books on golf than on the nation's past. Yet, as he writes in this pleasingly informal travelogue, he comes by his passion for the GWR naturally, having been inducted by a scholarly father in the pleasures of visiting historical places. An aficionado of Revolutionary War history, Dodson hits on plenty of battles along his path, which stretches from Pennsylvania and down the Shenandoah Valley into the Carolinas and Georgia. Like so many historic roads, the GWR began as a Native trail, but it soon came to serve as a conduit for moving new waves of immigrants out of crowded cities like Philadelphia into unsettled places. On that score, Dodson serves up an apposite quote from Benjamin Franklin, who, in an intemperate moment, railed, "Why should Pennsylvania, funded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of us Anglifying them?" Many of Dodson's historical subjects are those Germans, many others Scots-Irish, while his modern interlocutors come from all over, with one generous-minded local historian remarking, "The good news…is that many of the migrants we see coming here from Central and South America are hardworking folks eager to make a living." Dodson touches on other current controversies, including efforts to remove Confederate statues from Southern historical sites and, of more specialist interest, the exact routes of the GWR's numerous spurs. He writes with a light hand, talking with everyone who comes across his path and capturing some apt ideas, including one observation that in the colonial American melting pot, "the English built the houses, the Germans built the barns, and the Scots-Irish built the stills." Armchair travelers will enjoy Dodson's wanderings--and may even be inspired to explore the road on their own. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.