Swift, Earl

Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation's largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water--the same water that for generations has made Tangier's fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world.

On a treeless, windswept moor in eastern North Carolina, the Chevy is open to the rain. Birds nest in its seats. Officials of the surrounding county consider it junk. To Tommy Arney, it's a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, a piece of history. We follow his struggles to save a rusted '57 Chevy while financial ruin, government bureaucrats and the FBI close in on him.

Details the history of the creation of the U.S. interstate system, identifies the people involved in the development of American highways, and looks at how the interstates have transformed the country.