 Highbridge, a division of recorded books, presents Close Encounters with Humankind. A paleo-anthropologist investigates our evolving species. By Song He-Li, with Xin-Yong Yun. Read by Emily Wu Zeller. Introduction Let's take a journey together. In 2001, I was about to start a new chapter in my life as an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California Riverside. I was planning to ship everything I had to California, including my car, and then to travel elegantly on an airplane. All possible because UC Riverside was covering my moving costs. That plan was soon thwarted. My advisor from graduate schools strongly recommended that I drive across the country instead. Of course I objected. Strenuously. I wanted to get to California as soon as possible, to get settled as soon as possible. But that was only a superficial reason. To be frank, the endeavor terrified me. After a long discussion, I gave in to my advisors convincing argument that this would be the only chance in my life to experience and feel intimately what America was about. I was reminded of a book that had left a strong impression on me. Schools with Charlie 1962 by John Steinbeck. I read it after I graduated from college, while preparing to start graduate school in the United States. Steinbeck took his dog Charlie and drove across the country, agonizing over what it meant to be an American and what the nation was made of. He wrote frankly about the problems poisoning America, including racial inequality. From his depiction, it was not surprising at all that the civil rights movement broke out in the 1960s, shaking the whole country to its core. And this book made a deep impression on me as I was starting my life in the United States in 1990. When I left Korea, there was little interest in multiculturalism and diversity among Koreans. To someone like me who had a vague and simple understanding about two races, black and white, the multi-dimensional aspects of race and the deep-rooted tension between races were quite foreign. So when I took my advisor's suggestion to drive across the country, I decided to make the most of the experience by talking with people everywhere I went, seeing and feeling everything. I packed a voice recorder, along with the rest of my belongings that were not shipped, into my 1994 Dodge Voyager minivan. A reliable car, but one with manual windows, no air conditioning, and not even a tape deck, and set out. I decided on a few guiding principles before I started the cross-country drive. Sample complete. Ready to continue?