Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America the Way It's Supposed to Be -- With an Oi - Softcover

O'Rourke, P J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802144799 ISBN 13: 9780802144799

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010

Synopsis

Driving Like Crazy celebrates cars and author P. J. O'Rourke's love for them, while chronicling the golden age of the automobile in America. O'Rourke takes us on a whirlwind tour of the world's most scenic and bumpiest roads in trouble-laden cross-country treks, from a 1978 Florida-to-California escapade in a 1956 special four-door Buick sedan to a 1983 thousand-mile effort across Mexico in the Baja 1000 to a trek through Kyrgyzstan in 2006 on the back of a Soviet army surplus six-wheel-drive truck. For longtime fans of the celebrated humorist, the collection features a host of O'Rourke's classic pieces on driving, including "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink," about the potential misdeeds one might perform in the front (and back) seat of an automobile; "The Rolling Organ Donors Motorcycle Club," which chronicles a seven-hundred-mile weekend trip through Michigan and Indiana that O'Rourke took on a Harley Davidson alongside Car & Driver publisher David E. Davis, Jr.; his brilliant and funny piece from Rolling Stone on NASCAR and its peculiar culture, recorded during an alcohol-fueled weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1977; and an hilarious account of a trek from Islamabad to Calcutta in Land Rover's new Discovery Trek.

About this title

Product Description

Spanning 30 years, this collection chronicles famed humorist and gearhead O'Rourke's love affair with the automobile from mid-20th century to now, from heyday to sickbay.

Review

"With the car industry under attack, both socially and economically, it is pleasing to read O'Rourke's trenchant analysis of all the good things the automobile has brought to American society, even as his tongue is firmly planted in cheek . . . A great book for summer reading; thumbing through it elicits a laugh at almost any point." --Library Journal "Libertarian satirist P.J. O'Rourke has built a bestselling career by celebrating his own politically incorrect intemperance. So it's only fitting that he's devoted some of his best writing to that gaudy metaphor for excess, the gas-guzzling muscle car . . . The collapse of the auto industry makes the book poignantly timely." --SmartMoney "Car buff or not, all dads can enjoy satirist P.J. O'Rourke's ode to the American automobile." --The Daily Beast "[A] treat of a book . . . As with almost all of O'Rourke's work, it's easy reading, and he's just as good, if not better, at cracking wise about cars and driving as he is about liberal politics." --Dallas Morning News "Readers looking for insights and laughs will not be disappointed by Driving Like Crazy . . . [it] is a ride worth taking, even for readers who don't know an oil pan from a frying pan." --Washington Times "Driving Like Crazy isn't just a bound collection of greatest hits. P.J. has written new lead-ins to each story that offer fresh meat even for those who think they've read it all before . . . This book is a must-read." --Automobile Magazine "Reading O'Rourke can be like being dragged over a rocky field by a runaway ox on crystal meth--a wild and bumpy ride. His is a cartoonish vision of life, unapologetically if not joyously puerile, with enough hyperbolic volatility pumped into every paragraph to explode the Hindenburg all over again . . . For the automotive Walter Mittys of the world, who dream of an outlaw life on the road and identify more with the peace-disturbers than the peacemakers, it's definitely something,

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802144799
• ISBN 13: 9780802144799
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288