Divine Magnetic Lands by Tim O'Grady was my holiday reading over the long weekend, picked up at random from the wonderful Daunts Bookshop. (Here's another review by Chris Petit and one by Paul Mansfield.) First published in 2008 at the tail end of the Bush Administration, it's an account of a classic road trip around the United States, written by someone with wide knowledge of American history and culture, especially musical culture, and the external perspective that comes from having lived in the UK for many years. I've hardly been able to put it down all week. Timothy O'Grady is a novelist, according to the blurb here, and that shows in the poetic quality of his writing and in the fact that the people he meets come vividly to life on the page.

Although not an economics book, there's a lot to interest an economist in the bits of history recounted here. For example, the building of the Erie Canal was no inevitability. The land rises 600 feet needing at least 50 locks – it seemed unlikely that even the high transport costs would be enough to get it built. Its construction (in fact there were 83 locks) took eight years and cost a thousand lives. Once opened, it reduced transport costs from Buffalo to New York City to a twentieth of their earlier level, and upstate New York boomed.

I was also interested in the leg of the trip through the Tennessee Valley, having been struck by the impact of the TVA since first learning about it in high school geography. It was a massive project of state capitalism, and ever since – despite its success – political opponents have worked to deregulate progressively the provision of electricity, culminating of course in the Enron disaster.

One of these major public projects was privately funded and organised in the early 19th century; another state-funded and organised in the eary 20th century. We have yet to find the financing and organisation that will make possible to investment we need in this century.

However, this book isn't mainly about business and economics, but a reflection on the nature of America and its people. In its own way, it's as decisive a rejection of the works and philosophy of George W Bush as President Obama's inauguration speech. Not that it's overtly political, rather that there is a compassion for the many people who struggle with their lot in life and who were left in the dust by the go-go boom era which has ended so decisively.

As a footnote for visitors to London, Daunt Books is well worth a detour – either the branch in Marylebone High Street or the others in Holland Park, Chelsea, Belsize Park or Hampstead. I can't ever manage to leave without buying something, and they always put out on the tables things I turn out to enjoy.