The Road That Made America - by James Dodson (Hardcover)

About the Book

"... a lively, epic account of one of the greatest untold stories in our nation's history--the eight-hundred-mile long Great Wagon Road that 18th-century American settlers forged from Philadelphia to Georgia that expanded the country dramatically in the decades before we ventured west."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

In the bestselling tradition of Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail and Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic, The Road That Made America is a lively, epic account of one of the greatest untold stories in our nation's history--the eight-hundred-mile long Great Wagon Road that 18th-century American settlers forged from Philadelphia to Georgia that expanded the country dramatically in the decades before we ventured west.

Little known today, the Great Wagon Road was the primary road of frontier America: a mass migration route that stretched more than eight hundred miles from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia. It opened the Southern frontier and wilderness east of the Appalachian Mountains to America's first settlers, and later served as the gateway for the exploration of the American West. In the mid-1700s, waves of European colonists in search of land for new homes left Pennsylvania to settle in the colonial backcountry of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. More than one hundred thousand settlers made the arduous trek, those who would become the foundational generations of the world's first true immigrant nation. In their newly formed village squares, democracy took root and bloomed. During the Revolutionary War, the road served as the key supply line to the American resistance in the western areas of the colonies, especially in the South.

Drawing on years of fieldwork and scholarship by an army of archeologists, academics, archivists, preservationists, and passionate history lovers, James Dodson sets out to follow the road's original path from Philadelphia to Georgia. On his journey, he crosses six contiguous states and some of the most historic and hallowed landscapes of eastern America, touching many of the nation's most sacred battlefields and burying grounds. Due to its strategic importance, military engagements were staged along the Great Wagon Road throughout North America's three major wars, including the early days of the bloody French and Indian conflict and pivotal Revolutionary War encounters.

In time, the Great Wagon Road became America's first technology highway, as growing roadside villages and towns and cities became, in effect, the first incubators of America's early Industrial age. The people and ideas that traveled down the road shaped the character of the fledgling nation and helped define who we are today. Dodson's ancestors on both sides took the Great Wagon Road to Maryland and North Carolina, respectively, giving him a personal stake in uncovering the road's buried legacy. An illuminating and entertaining first-person history, The Road That Made America restores this long-forgotten route to its rightful place in our national story.

Review Quotes

Praise for the books of James Dodson

The Range Bucket List

"If you have been away from the game for any time, a year perhaps, or a day, Dodson's reflections on his life in golf will make you want to get out on the course immediately. He casts a spell from which you won't want to be released, and to which you will return, time and time again."
--Lorne Rubenstein, author of Moe & Me and A Season in Dornich

American Triumvirate

"Fascinating . . . A stroke of singular good fortune both for golf and for people who like to read about it . . . Dodson's book evokes an era when golf was more vivid and less corporate than it seems now."
--Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review

Ben Hogan: An American Life

"Sheer pleasure . . . Dodson reconstructs the great moments of the champion's career with brilliant drama and clarity."
--The Chicago Tribune

Final Rounds

"A beautiful, deeply moving tribute to the love between father and son and their shared passion for golf. I have never read a more eloquent book about golf as a game where hearts can meet."
--Michael Murphy, author of Golf in the Kingdom

About the Author

James Dodson is the author of sixteen books, including Final Rounds, A Golfer's Life (with Arnold Palmer), Ben Hogan: An American Life, American Triumvirate, and The Range Bucket List. His work has appeared in over fifty magazines and newspapers worldwide. He is the only two-time winner of the United States Golf Association's Herbert Warren Wind Award for best golf book of the year. In 2011, Dodson was selected for membership in the Order of the Longleaf by the governor of North Carolina, a prestigious award for exemplary service to the state. He is the founding editor of O Henry magazine. He lives with his wife in North Carolina.