Review
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“The season’s most playful (and best titled) entry . . .
[Ratay] vividly captures that relatively brief – but iconic –
time before cheap air travel and Wi-Fi, when ‘six people locked
up together in a tiny padded room,’ hurtling down the highway
without seatbelts, was something not simply to be enjoyed but
survived. Under Ratay’s confident and relaxed spell, anyone of a
certain age will be instantly transported back to those more
innocent times when Fuzzbusters and eight-track players were the
order of the day . . . Deceptively informative, this
high-spirited romp down the byways of America is part social
history, part memoir, and a loving salute to that brief time when
the wood-paneled family station wagon was king of the open road.”
—Andrew McCarthy, New York Times Book Review
“Don’t Make Me Pull Over! is nostalgia-glazed…charming…[and]
poignant.”
—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
“With s and rear-seat entertainment systems, the family
road-trip experience has changed dramatically, writes Ratay in
this enjoyable reminiscence on what they used to be . . . [His]
informative, often hilarious family narrative perfectly captures
the love-hate relationship many have with road trips.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Richard Ratay’s long-distance childhood adventures in his
family’s giant land cruisers are at the center of Don’t Make Me
Pull Over!, a breezy and warm-hearted ‘informal history’ of the
great American family road trip…It all goes down like a cold
lemonade on a hot summer’s day. Mr. Ratay is a charming raconteur
who always seems to know just when it’s time to get us all back
into the car with his big, quintessentially middle-class family.”
—Wall Street Journal
“As someone who missed the golden age of the family road trip, I
found Don’t Make Me Pull Over! a wonderful revelation, filled
with unexpected—and frequently amusing—ins into how so much
of our culture was built.”
—Rob Erwin, author of Lost with Directions: Ambling Around
America
“If only this book were available to Clark Griswold, he and his
family might well have stayed home. Don’t Make Me Pull Over! is
an encyclopedia of road trip adventures.”
—Chevy Chase, star of National Lampoon’s Vacation and “Saturday
Night Live”
"A book with a title as good as Don’t Make Me Pull Over! has a
lot to live up to, and somehow Richard Ratay manages to deliver.
It’s a memoir, a work of popular history, and a love letter all
in one. Books this wise are seldom so funny; books this funny are
rarely so wise."
—Andrew Ferguson, author of Land of Lincoln and Crazy U
“Captures all the adventure, bonding, desperate conflict, and
existential self-interrogation that is only made possible by
hours (and hours) on the road with your family. Read it, but
probably don’t read it while also driving your family around.”
—John Hodgman, author of More Information than You Require and
Vacationland
"Ratay's impressively researched book isn't just a road trip
across America—it's a trip back in time. Suddenly I was eight
years old again and bouncing around seatbelt-free in the back of
a Ford Country Squire station wagon."
—Ken Jennings, record-breaking "Jeopardy!" champion, and author
of head
“Ratay has perfectly captured the essence of what it was like to
embark on a road trip in the golden days of family vacations.
Combining spot-on history and a great sense of humor Don't Make
Me Pull Over! feels so authentic I got car reading it.”
—Jane Stern, co-author of Roadfood
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About the Author
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Richard Ratay was the last of four kids raised by two
mostly attentive parents in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. He graduated
from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism and
has worked as an award-winning advertising copywriter for
twenty-five years. Ratay lives in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin,
with his wife, Terri, their two sons, and two very excitable
rescue dogs.
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