It was also the winner of a Christopher Award in 1984. This memoir was very popular, making the New York Times bestseller list in 1982–83 for 42 weeks. The book records his search for something greater than himself and includes memorable encounters in roadside cafés. Living out of his van, he visited small towns such as Nameless, Tennessee Hachita, New Mexico and Bagley, Minnesota, to find places in America untouched by fast food chains and interstate highways. These roads were often drawn on maps in blue in the old-style Rand McNally road atlas, hence the book title. He tells how he traveled 13,000 miles, as much as possible on secondary roads, and tried to avoid cities. Works īlue Highways (1982) is a chronicle of a three-month-long road trip that Least Heat-Moon took throughout the United States in 1978 after he had lost his teaching job and been separated from his first wife. Trogdon resides in Boone County near the Missouri River. He later served as a professor of English at the university. Trogdon was a member of the Beta-Theta chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon. He later went back and completed a bachelor's in photojournalism at MU in 1978. He attended the University of Missouri, earning a bachelor's degree in 1961, a masters in 1962, and a PhD in 1972 (all in English). Trogdon, the son of an attorney, grew up in Missouri where he attended public schools. William's father, Ralph Grayston Trogdon, called himself 'Heat-Moon,' his elder half-brother from his mother's previous marriage was called by his stepfather 'Little Heat-Moon,' and he was called 'Least Heat-Moon.' The Trogdon family have no documented Native American ancestry. The Trogdon family name comes from his Euro-American lineage, and the Heat-Moon name reflects his unproven claims to Osage lineage. William Trogdon was born in Kansas City, Missouri.

He is the author of several books which chronicle unusual journeys through the United States, including cross-country trips by boat ( River-Horse, 1999) and, in his best known work (1982's Blue Highways), about his journey in a 1975 Ford Econoline van. William Least Heat-Moon (born William Lewis Trogdon August 27, 1939) is an American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and alleged Osage ancestry. Least Heat-Moon at the Seattle Public Library (2008)

Heaven and hell book john jakes