Better than Sliced Bread: Summer's Best Nonfiction

When I was a kid, family vacations took place in the dead of winter, not summer. My dad was a refrigeration mechanic: His job was to maintain those huge air-conditioning units that you see on the roofs of tall office buildings.

Naturally, summer was his busy time, so it was in that holiday week between Christmas and New Year's that he, my mom and I would pile into our Rambler Classic and go off on a road trip. Washington, D.C.; Williamsburg, Va.; Mystic, Conn.; Niagara Falls — I remember tramping around all those places on overcast, icy days.