William Least Heat-Moon
| William Least Heat-Moon | |
|---|---|
William Least Heat-Moon (2008)
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| Born | William Lewis Trogdon August 27, 1939 Kansas City, Missouri |
| Occupation | Travel writer, historian |
| Language | English |
| Ethnicity | English, Irish and Osage ancestry |
| Education | Bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English Bachelor's degree in photojournalism |
| Alma mater | University of Missouri |
| Genre | Deep map travel literature |
| Notable works | Blue Highways |
William Least Heat-Moon, also named William Lewis Trogdon (born August 27, 1939), is an American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He is the author of various bestselling books of topographical U.S. travel writing.
Least Heat-Moon has ancestry of both Native American and Euro-American lineages. His ancestry is reflected in his names: the Trogdon family name comes from his Euro-American lineage, and the Heat-Moon name reflects his Native American lineage. William's father is Heat-Moon, his elder brother is Little Heat-Moon, and he is thus Least Heat-Moon. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Least Heat-Moon grew up in Missouri and attended the University of Missouri, where he earned bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. He was a member of the Beta-Theta chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon, and he also served as a professor of English at the university.
He currently resides in Rocheport, Missouri, a small town in Boone County, Missouri, along the Missouri River about 10 miles west of Columbia.
Blue Highways, which spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 1982–83, 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. He tells how he traveled 13,000 miles, as much as possible on secondary roads (which he points out were often drawn on maps in blue, especially in the old-style Rand McNally road atlas), and tried to avoid cities. 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. The book records memorable encounters in roadside cafés as well as his search for something greater than himself.
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