C. K. Shepherd

Born in Birmingham, England, in 1895, C. K. Shepherd was Charles Kenilworth Shepherd, a Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force officer who reached the rank of captain during the First World War. After the war, he traveled to the United States and set off on an ambitious solo ride from New York to San Francisco in 1919.

That journey became his best-known book, Across America by Motor-cycle, published in 1922. The memoir mixes travel writing, observation, and practical adventure, describing rough roads, changing landscapes, and the people he met along the way at a moment when long-distance motorcycle travel was still a bold experiment.

Shepherd is remembered less as a prolific author than as a sharp-eyed narrator of one remarkable trip. For listeners who enjoy true adventure, early motoring history, or firsthand accounts of America in transition, his work still feels fresh and surprisingly immediate.