Bill Geist has a well-developed interest in the truly quirky. Over the decades, he sharpened his sense of American originals -- first as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, then as a two-time Emmy Award-winning correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning. His Way Off the Road travels far beyond parameters of normalcy. On its pages, we meet Mike Coffman, a Kansas cook who specializes in roadkill; Maggie Rennels, the Muleshoe, Texas, news anchor who sometimes presents the day's happening in her bathrobe; and the denizens of Beaver, Oklahoma, the cow-chip capital of the world. Geist has a knack for presenting these wacky eccentrics in their full human glory. Not everybody can do that: Like watermelon seed spitting, it's a gift.