David Samuels and Walter Kirn's Highway to Nowhere

Civilization, according to Saul Steinberg’s 1976 New Yorker cover, View of the World from 9th Avenue, ends at the shores of the Hudson River. Beyond that lies a reddish strip labeled “Jersey” and a barren yellow rectangle containing a few place-names (Kansas City, Nebraska) and rock formations, with three featureless lumps marked “China,” “Japan,” and “Russia” visible in the distance. County Highway, a new publication from the writers David Samuels and Walter Kirn, hereby claims “everything that is blank on that map” as its own. “If The New Yorker made New York City into a small town,” Kirn says, “we’re going to make the small towns of America into New York City.”