Cross Country

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 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 The New York Times bestseller, now in paperback - with new material - for summer road trips. Robert Sullivan is the author of The Meadowlands, A Whale Hunt, How Not to Get Rich, and the national bestseller Rats. He is a contributing editor to Vogue and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Dwell. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and their two children.