In its focus on the interdisciplinary study of the city and the road, this book seeks to examine in tandem two of the most powerful and widely investigated intellectual crucibles in the field of American studies. Developed by a small pool of scholars primarily based at the University of Hong Kong, the text aims to investigate the twin themes of attraction to and escape from the great cities in American history, considering the ways in which roads have facilitated these impulses by connecting and traversing them.

A short volume, made up of five primary essays, the text offers insights into these phenomena from multiple disciplinary perspectives, with contributors from the fields of history, cinema, literature and social geography. Areas of focus feature the implications of the urban in the rhetoric of successive US Presidents, a close study of the road in Asian American film, and the work of Ed McBain and the treatment of the city in detective fiction. In the most ambitious article in the volume, Earle Waugh takes the city and the road as prisms indicative of American values, with particular emphasis on the religious and sociocultural notion of “betterment,” and provides an analysis of their appearance in the literary history of the United States (71). While at times the breadth of scope in the article results in areas more suggested than fully explored, Waugh's tracing of the religious and spiritual self-identity in the literature of the city and the road offers a convincing and evocative addition to the scholarship.

The strength of this collection lies in the individual moments of interest and insight generated by the focus on the larger themes suggested by the editor, rather than in any grand unified theory of American urban culture and its relationship with the road. This is not a failure of the text; while boldly conceived, the editor disclaims any attempt at a comprehensive or exhaustive study of such vast subject matter, aiming instead to provide a stepping-stone for further research along the same lines. Although this may frustrate more seasoned urban scholars, the freshness of approach would likely appeal to readers interested in an overview of overarching themes in the growth of American national identity as channelled through its relationship with its greatest cities.