The U.S. road trip is an iconic part of American culture and literature. Here are some of the top U.S. road trip books (in chronological order).
1. Roughing It (1872) Mark Twain
2. The Cruise of the Rolling Junk (1924) F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. On The Road (1957) Jack Kerouac
4. Travels with Charley (1962) John Steinbeck
5. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) Tom Wolfe
6. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) Robert M. Pirsig
7. A Walk Across America (1979) Peter Jenkins
8. Blue Highways (1982) William Least Heat-Moon
9. Rolling Nowhere (1984) Ted Conover
10. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989) Bill Bryson
11. Cross Country (2006) Robert Sullivan
12. Wild (2012) Cheryl Strayed
A detailed map of these road trips is at “The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips” post on Atlas Obscura.
Honorable mention to American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (by Colin Woodard – 2011) – not a road trip book, but a great guide to America.