Why did she write this book?

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote The Last American Man so that people will understand how unnatural it is to live in the environment we have created, and hopefully to instill at least a piece of Conway’s message through this book. The best example of this came when Eustis Conway spoke about how we live our life in boxes while he lives his in circles. This, I thought, was one of the most influential pieces of the book because it was extremely obvious and true. Really, everywhere you look there is a box, even on this computer screen. There is a box for the word document I am in, a box to put the text in, a box to click and publish the text; the entire thing is a box! As time moves on, we progress. In the Stone Age, man invented the wheel, however as time progresses, the box becomes more and more prevalent (accept in architecture where the triangle shall always rule!). I think this was an important piece of the message that Gilbert was sending.