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    Cross Country
    Unavailable
    Cross Country
    Unavailable
    Cross Country
    Ebook662 pages8 hours

    Cross Country

    By Robert Sullivan

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Robert Sullivan, who has driven cross-country more than two dozen times, recounts one of his family's many journeys from Oregon to New York. His story of moving his family back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast (along with various other migrations), is replete with all the minor disasters, humor, and wonderful coincidences that characterize life on the road, not to mention life.

    As he drives, Sullivan ponders his Lewis and Clark and other fellow nation-crossers, meets Beat poets who are devotees of cross-country icon Jack Kerouac, and plays golf on an abandoned coal mine. And, in his trademark celebration of the mundane, Sullivan investigates everything from the history of the gas pump to the origins of fast food and rest stops. Cross Country tells the tales that come from fifteen years of driving across the country (and all around it) with two kids and everything that two kids and two parents take when driving in a car from one coast to another, over and over, driving to see the way the road made America and America made the road.


    Praise for Cross Country:
    "Sullivan writes with precision, humor and empathy, and his own voice carrying us along."-Oregonian
    "[A] sprawling, zigzagging, history-drenched memoir."-Boston Globe
    "[An] entertaining, eclectic and eccentric memoir."-Cleveland Plain Dealer
    "[Sullivan] channels Walt Whitman's sense of wonder."-Washington Times
    "[Sullivan] could be the uncrowned king of road tripping."-Seattle Post Intelligencer
    "Sullivan is sensitive, witty and well-read, which is why it's so much fun to have him along for the ride."-USA Today
    "Sullivan is fascinating...he's in a league with Bill Bryson, a writer who deftly mixes humor and knowledge."-Fort Worth Star Telegram
    "Cross Country is, by turns, grand, timely, intriguing...fascinating." -LA Times Book Review
    "[Sullivan] is brilliant at

    Editor's Note

    Midterms…

    As you hit the road for Thanksgiving, take this memoir of many cross-country escapades with you. Robert Sullivan pays loving tribute to America’s interstate highway system and all the hijinks these windy roads make possible. A great balm after the polarizing midterms, too.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateJan 15, 2011
    ISBN9781608196616
    Unavailable
    Cross Country
    Author

    Robert Sullivan

    Robert Sullivan is the author of Rats, The Meadowlands, A Whale Hunt, and most recently, The Thoreau You Don't Know. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, A Public Space and Vogue, where he is a contributing editor. He was born in Manhattan and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Cross Country

    3/5

    26 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      . Aside from winning the prize for the longest title of the year, this is a (pardon the pun) middle of the road read. Although we’ve never done the full cross-country road trip (yet) we have done enough multi-day drives that many of the observerations and anecdotes resonated. But the narrative, like the trip itself, meanders between travelogue and history, in a way that’s both engaging and annoying.
    • 3/5
      I love road books. This one is mostly interesting, but meanders a bit too much. Two quotes struck me, the first on page 368, "There is nothing like traffic to squash euphoria." the second on page 381, "Sometimes I think of the interstate as a giant, 80mph conveyor belt for trucks." As someone who has driven countless times between Phoenix and Los Angeles on I-10, I know just how he feels.
    • 4/5
      The full and very elongated title of this book by Robert Sullivan is: “Cross Country: fifteen years and 90,000 miles on the roads and interstates of America with Lewis and Clark, a lot of bad motels, a moving van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, my wife, my mother-in-law, two kids and enough coffee to kill an elephant” and it aptly sets the tone for what the reader will find between its covers. On the surface, Cross Country is a narrative about a current-day family of four making a trans-continental road trip from Oregon to New York, with all the expected joy and frustration, exhilaration and fatigue that go with it. But this is so much more than another travel tale. The author weaves his own personal story along with anecdotes and histories in a litany of subjects, all of which are in some way connected to the notion of Americans traveling America.Beginning with a short history of Lewis and Clark, the first Americans to make that cross-country road trip, the author touches upon the westward immigration, the history of the automobile, early travel pamphlets, the story of motels and a critique of road food. He also gives the reader a look into beat poets, to-go coffee cup lids, rest stops, falling asleep at the wheel, and other unlikely topics. But the over-arching subject throughout the book is the history of American roads and highways and how they have changed this country and its way of life. While it may seem to some a rather dry subject, the author actually treats it with humor and insight and draws some pointed conclusions. A very enjoyable book, it is one which will have the reader frequently remarking to himself, “Gee, I didn’t know that!”