Travels with Charley: In Search of America, by John Steinbeck

In 1960, in the twilight of his life, behind the wheel of a camper  named - after the horse of Don Quixote - Rocinante,  John Steinbeck set off to a ten thousand miles road trip around the United States.  His company were Charlie,  a French poodle, and the sheer desire to rediscover America.   

John Steinbeck's Camper Truck

Through the four corners of the continent, his search of the nation garnered a better understanding of the  epochal changes that had been on the way and underpinned the transition to the modern post-industrial world that we also experience today. The mass production and elaboration of  food, the evil force of advertising, the ubiquity of culture and information powered by mass media technology, the insane and destructive  engine of progress, the decline of a country purposely brought down to political indifference and ignorance of its very own greatness.