Thoughts & Musings from James McNiven
A while back, my wife Jane and I took a 5-day trip into New England for a short break. From our home in Nova Scotia, Canada, the drive is a long one - some 500 miles into central Maine. Some Americans don’t realize that North America extends some 900-1000 miles east and north of the… Continue reading Interchangeable Parts and The American Precision Museum
You might want to follow this explanation on a map. How US 20 (America's longest highway and the subject of my book trilogy The Yankee Road) ended in Newport, or even at Yellowstone, is a complex story. First and foremost, it begins with boundaries. After the American Revolution, the British kept control over the eastern seaboard… Continue reading Boundaries
With the publication of Volume 3 of The Yankee Road launching August 2020 (here's a bit of the story behind US 20, America's longest highway. US 20 stretches across the United States nearly 3400 miles, from Boston to Newport, Oregon. It is a designation connecting a number of largely pre-existing roads rather than a singular… Continue reading The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
"Not only for Cyrus’ sake did Xenophon march up toward the Persians. But in search of a road which led up to Zeus." Diogenes Laërtius Americans have added, in great numbers, to the road book literature. American stories of travel and roads have been conditioned by the general habit of a people constantly on the… Continue reading American Road Books
Old Professor by the Sea 