A walk across America
by Jenkins, Peter · first published 1980
12mentions
5recommended by
8HN commenters
2010–2025first – last mentioned
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Inspiring first-person account of walking across the United States, read by many as a teenager or college-aged reader; praised for sparking the desire for long journeys and for its vivid road stories.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The author begins his 1500-mile hike from New York to Louisiana with disdain for American lifestyles and ends it with a feeling of expectation and discovery.
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Great idea and i'm sure an incredible experience. But, Wow, what a cultural indicator the way this guy travels is! i remember reading Peter Jenkins's book A Walk Across America as a kid (highly recommended) and he just had a backpack and a dog. this guy has a cart with a rubbermaid box full of stuff. It captures something about our culture that 'savoring the country' now requires…
on “"I'm walking across America."” ↗One of the most significant books I ever read was A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. He graduated college in the 70's, wasn't sure what to do, and decide to walk from New York to the Pacific ocean. This book covered the first half of the walk; he wrote it while taking…
on “How You Know” ↗It's really outdated now, but "A Walk Across America" by Peter Jenkins. Reading that inspired me to spend 13+ months living on a bicycle in my twenties. So much of who I am is a direct result of the experiences I had living on the road for several years.…
on “What book has inspired you the most?” ↗Or for a slightly more positive take on the South than that book https://www.amazon.com/Walk-Across-America-Peter-Jenkins/dp/...
on “Work from home is dead, long live work from anywhere” ↗A Walk Across America was amazing reading when I was college aged. I've never forgotten the story about the accident when he and his (then-girlfriend?) were walking along a quiet highway, I think in Nevada, and they decided…
on “He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over” ↗Cool. I read A Walk across America, in serial form (2 parts) in the National Geographic magazine, long ago. It was great, and the first time I heard of the concept of such a long journey on foot, although I knew about people driving across…
on “Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?” ↗For a more close to home focus, I do have to point to A Walk Across America from the same time period (I think the author wrote a sequel about more international stuff)
on “The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)” ↗When I finished undergrad I started teaching middle school, and after two years of teaching I finally had a summer off with zero obligations. I had read A Walk Across America, about a guy who walked across the US. It sounded fascinating but it took him several years. So I settled on biking, because you can get all the way across the US on a bike in a summer. I did that a couple…
on “Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?” ↗I don't see a mention of "A Walk Across America" by Peter Jenkins, who did a similar thing back in the 1970s.
on “"I'm walking across America."” ↗I read a book called A Walk Across America in college, by Peter Jenkins. I liked the idea of traveling under my own power, but I didn't want to spend years walking. I kept when I got my driver's license, and I was bike commuting in NYC at the…
on “He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over” ↗Peter Jenkins did his Walk Across America in the 1980s.
on “A man who walked around the world” ↗Probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Walk_Across_America : > Walk Across America is a nonfiction travel book first published in 1979. It was the first book written by travel author Peter Jenkins, with support from the National Geographic Society. The book…
on “The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)” ↗