COMES OVER ONE the absolute necessity to move.' Thus the opening sentence of D H Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia, the best of his travel pieces.W hat is it that compels certain people to scorn hearth and home and return relentlessly to the open road, or desolate places where no roads go? Some possible answers are explored in Ghost Riders.

Richard Grant is an Englishman who has spent his adult life wandering the wilds of America. His book is as much a personal statement as an impersonal investigation: he hopes that by interviewing tramps and bullriders, RV retirees and New Age travellers, and by tracing the figure of the American