The King’s Best Highway:  The Lost History Of The Boston Post Road, The Road That Made America, by Eric Jaffe

This book is a bit of a bait and switch.  For one, this book did not exactly make America, as the book spends its entire time in the area between Boston and New York City, and there is and always has been a great deal of America that is outside of these borders, as much as that might be hard to admit for provincial East coast dwellers to admit.  For another, this book is a classic example of what happens when people write books on roads and transportation who hate cars.  The author spends a great deal of time whining about the lack of public transportation and the disparities in expenditure between transportation that people actually want (better roads for cars) as opposed to that which is a waste even in small quantities (public transit that hardly anyone other than hipster “transportation experts” like the author really want).  To be sure, this is a book that is interesting, but for all the wrong reasons, not because the author has any great insights to share on the road itself, but rather because he sees the road as an entrance to tell a great many other interesting stories.

This book is divided into three parts.  The first part of the book explores the Boston Post road during the colonial and early history of the nation in six chapters where the path moved from a dangerous track to an ordinary way (1), got mixed up in colonial politics (2), drew the attention of Benjamin Franklin (3) as well as independence-minded writers (4), and even involved George Washington (5) and early American businesses (6).  The second part of the book shows the railroad as a highway with chapters on the rivalry between Boston and New York (7), the Union of various railway lines (8), and the role that railroad business had to play in 19th century politics (9).  Finally, the third part of the book looks at the Boston Post Road as a national standard for roads, discussing the good roads movement (10), the struggle of actually paving the roads to a high enough level for cars (11), the relocation of Highway 1 (12), and the way that roads changed the face of America (13), as well as the author’s own whining about driving the Boston Post Road (14), along with the usual acknowledgments, sources and notes, and index for readers to enjoy as well.

Again, this is a book that like many could have been so much better had the author had a better perspective on what he was doing.  Those who see the transportation of America through the eyes of latte-drinking Acela riders are not really going to be in touch with the general population at large.  Those who simultaneously support overregulation and knee-jerk anti-business mindsets like huckster P.T. Barnum as well as transportation policy that is fun by out-of-touch elites who want to push public transit and reduce the freedom of Americans to travel where and when and how they want with a minimum of burdensome subsidies of failed transportation methods will probably like this book a lot.  But those who dislike the approach that the author comes with, and that becomes increasingly visible as the book nears its conclusion, will find little to cheer here except to rejoice in the author’s struggle to go more than fifteen miles an hour along US-1 from New York towards Boston while he whines about chain restaurants and stores and shows himself to be a rather unlikeable fellow.  People who have the author’s worldview should refrain from writing about cars and roads, as we would all be better off with less hand-wringing and whining from folks like the author.