In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the long-time Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker, acquired his Chinese drivers licence. For the next seven years he travelled the country, tracking how the automobile and the improved transport system were transforming China. Hessler writes movingly of everyday people farmers, migrant workers and entrepreneurs who have reshaped the country during one of the most critical periods in its history. Country Driving illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against outsiders, is building the roads and factory towns that will shape the twenty-first century.