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Title details for Don't Make Me Pull Over! by Richard Ratay - Wait list

Don't Make Me Pull Over!

An Informal History of the Family Road Trip

by Richard Ratay
Jonathan Todd Ross
Audiobook
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Wait time: About 2 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
"A lighthearted, entertaining trip down Memory Lane" (Kirkus Reviews), Don't Make Me Pull Over! offers a nostalgic look at the golden age of family road trips—before portable DVD players, smartphones, and Google Maps.
The birth of America's first interstate highways in the 1950s hit the gas pedal on the road trip phenomenon and families were soon streaming—sans seatbelts!—to a range of sometimes stirring, sometimes wacky locations. In the days before cheap air travel, families didn't so much take vacations as survive them. Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them—from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn't believe in bathroom breaks.

Now, decades later, Ratay offers "an amiable guide...fun and informative" (New York Newsday) that "goes down like a cold lemonade on a hot summer's day" (The Wall Street Journal). In hundreds of amusing ways, he reminds us of what once made the Great American Family Road Trip so great, including twenty-foot "land yachts," oasis-like Holiday Inn "Holidomes," "Smokey"-spotting Fuzzbusters, twenty-eight glorious flavors of Howard Johnson's ice cream, and the thrill of finding a "good buddy" on the CB radio.

An "informative, often hilarious family narrative [that] perfectly captures the love-hate relationship many have with road trips" (Publishers Weekly), Don't Make Me Pull Over! reveals how the family road trip came to be, how its evolution mirrored the country's, and why those magical journeys that once brought families together—for better and worse—have largely disappeared.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 3, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781508261322
      • File size: 248114 KB
      • Duration: 08:36:54

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Folks old enough to remember the "joys" of road trips in the family station wagon in the 1970s will delight in this fascinating look at the evolution of travel in the U.S. Narrator Jonathan Ross delightfully handles the first-person narrative about piling into the family land yacht and driving across the country. Ross speaks with tongue in cheek about squabbling siblings, overconfident dads, questioning moms, and landmarks such as giant balls of string and even large animal statues. The book resonates with common memories of the days when gas was under a buck and summers were forever. The audiobook gives listeners a fascinating history lesson about the development of the car and American roads. Dare I say it? This is a great book to listen to on just such a trip. M.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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