The King’s Best Highway: The Story of the Post Road from Boston to New York, the Forgotten Road That Made America

From a track in the wilderness to today’s paved, commerce-filled road, U.S. Route 1, first known as the King’s Highway, is unsurpassed for historic significance among American highways. Jaffe’s lively, informal if undisciplined survey of its history, from Indian paths united by 17th-century settlers into one main path to the 21st-century road it has become, takes us not only down the East Coast’s original main route between Boston and New York but up its original course from New Haven to Hartford, Conn. Some will read of the road’s development as a history of the decline and degradation of nature, others of necessary developments as the world changed. Green is correct that the old King’s Highway is a metaphor of the nation’s history over almost five centuries, but side trips to canals and railroads, the newspapers that developed and were distributed along the post road, and everyone’s hated I-95, aren’t central to the story. Yet Jaffe’s concluding personal journey along the historic way lends color to his light work of popular history. Maps. (June)