Road Trips, a memoir by Tamim Ansary, recounts stories from his years as part of the American counterculture of the '60s and '70s, after he arrived from Afghanistan where he was born and where he spent the first sixteen years of his life. The book revolves around three arduous journeys launched from his home base in Portland, Oregon, between 1969 (when he hitchhiked across North America with five dollars in his pocket) and 1975 ( when he and a girlfriend went on a four-month road trip ending in the jungles of the Yucatan peninsula. These odysseys are bracketed by a prologue in...