While many of the roads on public lands provide a great service with relatively little harm, others create significant problems -- from habitat fragmentation to noise pollution to increased animal mortality -- with little or no benefit.

In No Place Distant, author David Havlick presents for the first time a comprehensive and in-depth examination of the more than 550,000 miles of roads that crisscross our national parks, national forests, Bureau of Land Management lands, and wildlife refuges, considering how they came to be; their ecological, financial, and societal costs; an