SOURCE: A biographical essay in Ernie's America: The Best of Ernie Pyle's 1930s Travel Dispatches, edited with an introduction by David Nichols, Random House, 1989, pp. xvii-1.

In the following essay, Nichols provides an overview of Pyle's career.

Rare is the American who has not dreamed of dropping whatever he is doing and hitting the road. The dream of unrestrained movement is a distinctly American one, an inheritance bequeathed to subsequent generations by those restless souls who populated the American continent. Travel—away from here, toward a vague and distant destination—is part of our national folklore.

Economic hardship has been a common inducement. Steinbeck's Okies traveled west on Route 66 toward what they hoped would be a better life. Others have had a more spiritual motive: the outer journey has been a mere symbol for the inner, the road a means of finding themselves. Still others have traveled to...