| |||||
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...
Books: CookBooks: Coffee: Item 3
|
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...by Robert Sullivan
|
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful: Sullivan always finds the story beneath the story, July 15, 2006 Reviewer:Marla (New York) - This guy is an excellent writer. He could write about rats and it would be interesting. Wait, he DID write about rats and it was interesting. "Cross Country" is about Sullivan, like most of his books, but he somehow dodges the navel-gazing traps of so many so-called memoirists out there.
From Publishers Weekly
Sullivan (Rats; The Meadowlands) offers a boisterous, busily researched composite of trips he and his family have taken across the American continent. Sullivan claims he's gone from the West to East Coast and back about 27 times over the years, and on this particular summer sojourn, the vacationing family—comprising husband, wife and two kids, one a teenager—blast from Oregon back to their home in Brooklyn, N.Y., over five days. They first garner a personalized TripTik from AAA, which plots the route and provides essential information, then set out in a rented Impala. The author is adamant about stopping at the Columbia River Gorge to offer an extended digression on the Lewis and Clark expedition; the family then penetrates the intractable Bitterroot Range and manages to make time for Western highlights such as the Old Works golf Course in Anaconda, Mont., before sailing through Woody Guthrie country; Jack Kerouac's gas station in Longmont, Colo.; and speedily over the George Washington Bridge. The coffee-addled navigator engages in entertaining discourses on the standardized highway system, Emily Post and the provenance of the convenience-store coffee lid, among other subjects. His narrative is fun and chatty, with an emphasis squarely on the West. (July)
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Review
"Rollicking, ironic chronicle of a family car trip from Oregon to New York, interlaced with stories about previous trips, Lewis and Clark, Jack Kerouac, varieties of coffee lids, andwell, see the subtitle. Sullivan, who seems to specialize in quirky, uncategorize-able subjects, takes us on a journey that's sentimental but also literate, literary, amusing, informative, wicked, self-deprecating and deeply entertaininga dazzling account of America's most archetypal odyssey, with much social history slyly and wryly inserted." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred Review)
"Whether you are planning your escape by interstate or merely looking for some poolside reading, Sullivan's excursions through history, National Parks, potholes, and "Cheese Country" offer plenty of opportunity for learning and fun. His trapped-with-the-family jaunts are authentic and frenetic-just like every good road trip should be-and the teasing details he offers about such things as the origins of the Indy 500 and the coffee cup lid do exactly what a good travel book should do: inspire you to explore."—Library Journal
"Sullivan puts a magnifying glass to the culture born from westward expansion, ruminating on the banal beauty of what is now mostly taken for granted outside our windshields. Like all good road books, Cross Country generates the excitement that the idea of transcontinental travel holds: the hope to find something new that we don't realize exists while standing still."—Playboy.com
"This is a road-trip ode to all the families who have traveled by car across America. The author's many side trips make for fascinating and funny reading."—Sacramento Bee
"'Cross Country' is a mad rush of places, impressions and history cut into bite-size pieces perfect for digesting as a passenger along for the ride."--Santa Cruz Sentinel
"If Jack Kerouac went on the road these days, he'd be sipping a 24-ounce soda on a 10-lane superhighwaylike his bestselling 'Rats,' which used the rodents to paint an alternative history of New York, Mr. Sullivan's new book takes another somewhat prosaic obsession -- in this case, highway travel -- and uses it as a historical road map."—Wall Street Journal
"In our age of authorial specialization Sullivan is the rare nonfiction writer who maintains a catholic curiosity…he is brilliant at capturing the moods and moments of an American family road trip…Cross Country is delightful as history, but it's the tender portrait of a family driving home together, enjoying their time just the four of them, that resonates on closing the book. America may or may not "be" the road, but for the Sullivans and so many other families, their time there comes to define them." --New York Times Book Review
"Sullivan takes us on a propulsive ride. He combines charming personal recollections with compelling musings on the history of American roads, motels, the Cannonball Run, the coffee-cup lid, andyou get the idea. By book's end, you'll feel pleasantly tripped outwide-eyed at all the sights you've seen along the way." A- --Entertainment Weekly
"Sullivan's rangy, amusing account of his family's trek from Oregon to New York, gives us Lewis and Clark (and their modern-day impersonators), interstate visionary Carl Fisher, Cannonball Run racer Brock Yates, and those pleasingly mundane highlights (impromptu golf) and headaches (speed traps) of life on the American road." –Vogue
"'This is the America that is calculatedly heartwarming, represented by people who are purported to symbolize America -- people who are Platonic ideas of Americans: a lobsterman from Maine, a logger from Oregon, a rancher from Texas,' writes Robert Sullivan, in the introduction to his new, white-stripe-hypnotized travelogue on (and ruminative ode to) the interstates, 'Cross Country.' (His last book was about rats. Another book was about New Jersey 's forsaken Meadowlands. Oh, we like him.)"
--Washington Post
"Sullivan writes with precision, humor and empathy, his own voice carrying us along." -- Portland Oregonian
"[A] sprawling, zigzagging, history-drenched memoirlike Jack Kerouac before him, Sullivan clearly believes that discovery in the American road sense of the word -- meaning the quasi-patriotic reaching of enlightenment about one's nation via kinetic passage over its breadth -- remains a real possibility, minimarts, Wal-Marts, and all. No one is better equipped to do this than Sullivan. His previous books have revealed him to be something of an urban Thoreau So turning the American roadside -- with its blisters of fast-food restaurants, its fungal growth of billboards -- into a thing of beauty is a piece of cake for Sullivan." -- Boston Globe
"If you ride along with Sullivan - the curious and funny and often very wise writer of this entertaining, eclectic and eccentric memoir - the days and miles will melt away like bright and brilliant dreams. And not a single time will you ask, 'Are we there yet?'" -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Sullivan puts a magnifying glass to the culture born from westward expansion, ruminating on the banal beauty of what is now mostly taken for granted outside our windshields. Like all good road books, Cross Country generates the excitement that the idea of transcontinental travel holds: the hope to find something new that we don't realize exists while standing still."—Playboy.com
"This is a road-trip ode to all the families who have traveled by car across America. The author's many side trips make for fascinating and funny reading."—Sacramento Bee
"'Cross Country' is a mad rush of places, impressions and history cut into bite-size pieces perfect for digesting as a passenger along for the ride."--Santa Cruz Sentinel
"If Jack Kerouac went on the road these days, he'd be sipping a 24-ounce soda on a 10-lane superhighwaylike his bestselling 'Rats,' which used the rodents to paint an alternative history of New York, Mr. Sullivan's new book takes another somewhat prosaic obsession -- in this case, highway travel -- and uses it as a historical road map."—Wall Street Journal
"In our age of authorial specialization Sullivan is the rare nonfiction writer who maintains a catholic curiosity…he is brilliant at capturing the moods and moments of an American family road trip…Cross Country is delightful as history, but it's the tender portrait of a family driving home together, enjoying their time just the four of them, that resonates on closing the book. America may or may not "be" the road, but for the Sullivans and so many other families, their time there comes to define them." --New York Times Book Review
"Sullivan takes us on a propulsive ride. He combines charming personal recollections with compelling musings on the history of American roads, motels, the Cannonball Run, the coffee-cup lid, andyou get the idea. By book's end, you'll feel pleasantly tripped outwide-eyed at all the sights you've seen along the way." A- --Entertainment Weekly
"Sullivan's rangy, amusing account of his family's trek from Oregon to New York, gives us Lewis and Clark (and their modern-day impersonators), interstate visionary Carl Fisher, Cannonball Run racer Brock Yates, and those pleasingly mundane highlights (impromptu golf) and headaches (speed traps) of life on the American road." –Vogue
"'This is the America that is calculatedly heartwarming, represented by people who are purported to symbolize America -- people who are Platonic ideas of Americans: a lobsterman from Maine, a logger from Oregon, a rancher from Texas,' writes Robert Sullivan, in the introduction to his new, white-stripe-hypnotized travelogue on (and ruminative ode to) the interstates, 'Cross Country.' (His last book was about rats. Another book was about New Jersey 's forsaken Meadowlands. Oh, we like him.)"
--Washington Post
"Sullivan writes with precision, humor and empathy, his own voice carrying us along." -- Portland Oregonian
"[A] sprawling, zigzagging, history-drenched memoirlike Jack Kerouac before him, Sullivan clearly believes that discovery in the American road sense of the word -- meaning the quasi-patriotic reaching of enlightenment about one's nation via kinetic passage over its breadth -- remains a real possibility, minimarts, Wal-Marts, and all. No one is better equipped to do this than Sullivan. His previous books have revealed him to be something of an urban Thoreau So turning the American roadside -- with its blisters of fast-food restaurants, its fungal growth of billboards -- into a thing of beauty is a piece of cake for Sullivan." -- Boston Globe
"If you ride along with Sullivan - the curious and funny and often very wise writer of this entertaining, eclectic and eccentric memoir - the days and miles will melt away like bright and brilliant dreams. And not a single time will you ask, 'Are we there yet?'" -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
Sacramento Bee :
"This is a road-trip ode to all the families who have traveled by car across America.fascinating and funny reading."
New York Times Book Review :
"[Sullivan] is brilliant at capturing the moods and moments of an American family road trip.Cross Country is delightful as history."
Entertainment Weekly :
"A propulsive ride. [Sullivan] combines charming personal recollections with compelling musings.[you'll feel] wide-eyed at all the sights you've seen."
Vogue :
"Sullivan's rangy, amusing account of his family's trek from Oregon to New York, gives us.life on the American road."
Shop Bookstores:
Books
Resources
Most Watched Book Auctions
Coffee at Sduf
News To Peruse
More Subjects
Book Review Directory
Reviewed Authors
Reviewed Titles
Review List
Site Map
