From the bestselling author of Rats , a personal and national history of one of America 's favorite pastimes: driving across the country. The cross-country trip is the trip that often whizzes past us on our way to quaint back roads and scenic parks; it's an America of long, looping highways, strip malls, fast-food depots, and road rage, but also one that is wide-open, awe-inspiring, and heartwarmingly lonely. Here, Sullivan, who has driven cross-country more than two dozen times, recounts his family's annual summer migration from Oregon to New York. His story of moving his family back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast (and 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 nation-crossing predecessors, such as legendary duo Lewis and Clark, as well the more improbable heroes of America's unending urge to cross itself: Carl Fisher, an Indianapolis bicycle maker who founded the Indy 500, dropped cars off of buildings and imagined the first cross-country road; Emily Post, who, before her life as an etiquette writer, was one of the first cross-country chroniclers; and the race car drivers who, appalled by the invention of seatbelts and speed limits, ran an underground cross-country car race in the 1970s known as the Cannonball Run. Sullivan meets Beat poets who are devotees of Jack Kerouac, cross-country icon, 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. Robert Sullivan, a contributing editor for Vogue , claims to have logged over 90,000 miles of transcontinental travel. Though Cross Country details just one of those jaunts, the experience comes in handy for this "charming memoir-cum-rumination on the great American road trip" ( New York Times Book Review ). Where his earlier books featured immersive, expansive treatments of narrow subjects ( Rats , ***1/2 July/Aug 2004; The Meadowlands ), here the rolling odometer opens up a hodgepodge of topics for this "urban Thoreau" ( Boston Globe ). A few critics feel there's too much room to mentally roam, but most reviewers proclaim it a trip well worth taking. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. “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, and...well, 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 entertaining...a 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 superhighway...like 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 w