Wayne Curtis is the author of "The Last Great Walk" (Sept 2014), an account of Edward Payson Weston's walk from New York to San Francisco in 1909. (He averaged 40 miles per day and was 70 years old when he did it.) It's also about what's been lost in the century since we've essentially given up walking in favor of traveling about in upholstered boxes attached to a series of small explosions. Curtis is a contributing editor at The Atlantic magazine, where he writes about travel, architecture, cocktails, and American pop culture. He's also written for numerous other publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, American Scholar, Saveur, Men's Journal, Yankee, American Archeology, and the radio show This American Life. He's the author of "And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in 10 Cocktails" (Crown, 2006), and 2002 he was named Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year. He's lived in New Orleans since 2006.