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    Unavailable
    The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family
    Unavailable
    The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family
    Unavailable
    The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family
    Audiobook (abridged)4 hours

    The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It's not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At eighty-seven, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack's bride of sixty years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite-pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?

    Mike was thinking that he wanted to give his parents the ultimate family reunion. And so, one February morning, three generations of Leonards set out on their journey under the dazzling Arizona sky. Thirty minutes later, one of the humongous recreational vehicles has an unplanned meeting with a concrete island at a convenience store. Thus begins the adventure of a lifetime-and an absolute gem of a book.

    In the course of their humorous, often poignant cross-country tour, from the desert Southwest to the New England coastline, the Leonards reminisce about their loves, their losses, and their rich and heartwarming (and sometimes heartbreaking) lives, while encountering a veritable Greek chorus of roadside characters along the way. The home stretch finds the clan racing back to Chicago, hoping to catch the arrival of the next generation, Jack and Marge's first great-grandchild. Through it all, Mike pieces together acentury of family lore and lunacy-and discovers surprising sides to his parents that allow him to see them in a whole new light.

    Mike Leonard has captivated millions of television viewers with his wry and witty feature stories for NBC's Today. Now he brings that same engaging charm and keen insight to the foibles and passions of his own blessedly unique family. By turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, The Ride of Our Lives delivers a lifetime of laughs, lessons, and priceless memories.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 18, 2006
    ISBN9780739324677
    Unavailable
    The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family

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    Reviews for The Ride of Our Lives

    3.5/5

    58 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this. Mike Leonard, bravely, takes his 80ish parents and 3 of his adult children, across the country in two RVs. The parents are the stars of the journey, members of the greatest generation and real characters. His mother drinks, swears and laughs and his father is real story teller and they enjoy each other. The story of Mike's childhood harks back to the days when kids weren't managed and groomed, which I found very refreshing. The journey focuses on their lives and relationships more than the scenery and is laugh-out-loud funny.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      a boring trip but an interesting family story.
    • 4/5
      Extremely funny; I loved it!
    • 3/5
      ok - it tells the woes of a family trip in 2 RVs. Language makes me cringe, but is realistic from crusty grandparents and middle aged author. But not necessary either.
    • 3/5
      Parts of this autobiography/memoir are hilarious. Mike Leonard's parents are polar opposites who raised a loving and funny family. Leonard's gift is in finding the lesson and/or symbolism in small, seemingly insignificant events. But even a gift can be overused to the point of being tiresome. The Today Show snippets of this "journey" were much more entertaining than the book. Still, I'm glad I got to know Jack and Marge even if Leonard's writing style is a bit repetitive.
    • 2/5
      This was done much better in Little Miss Sunshine. Got tired of being told how funny everything was.
    • 5/5
      Motor home tour with parents of Mike. Very funny.
    • 3/5
      Packing his family into two RVs, Mike Leonard, a feature reporter for NBC’s Today Show, went on a cross-country road trip. The trip resulted in a four-part series on the Today Show, this book, and a family reconnecting with its past and with future generations. Starting from Scottsdale, the home of Mike’s retired parents, it ended two weeks later in Chicago. In Chicago Marge and Jack Leonard, Mike’s parents, became great-grandparents.The book is a combination of nostalgia, oral history, family history, national history, and pop culture history. The combinations and conflicts between the various histories make the book a fascinating artifact. Jack and Marge represent two opposite personalities, Marge’s pessimism and Jack’s optimism. Jack sometimes threatened to derail the entire trip by talking people’s ears off. Mike characterizes the long monologues in defense of the ordinary man “The Bleeding Heart Express.”Jack’s propensity to leaven the mood with obscure songs interests his grandson, who tells them about Puff Daddy. As is typical when multiple generations clash over their musical tastes, hilarity ensues. Throughout the book, Mike combines the present-day experiences of the road trip with stories of his mother and father.One of the more intriguing episodes occurred when the family visited the Biltmore Estate, the largest private residence in the United States. Jack’s mother, Annie, had emigrated from Ireland and worked as a domestic for a wealthy New Jersey family. When asked about the Depression and the rash of suicides associated with the period, Jack says, “For them [the rich] it was more about losing face than losing money. … There should be no shame in going broke. The dishonor comes from getting rich … if you do it the wrong way, if you take advantage of other people.” They are words of wisdom from a man who endured more than his fair share of ups and downs.The greatest irony is that Mike Leonard comes across as the least likable character of the bunch. The fault does not originate in the content so much as the delivery. Leonard excels at capturing the little moments of humor and pathos during the journey. He characterizes himself with a brand of self-deprecatory humor that leavens a book otherwise destined for wooden self-seriousness. The humor lightens the mood, since the literature about the Greatest Generation and the Boomer Generation sometimes devolves into hagiography and misplaced reverence. This reviewer contends that he overdid the self-depreciation shtick. Every so often, a humorous remark aimed at his personal failings would have vastly improved the book, but he laid it on thick. Instead, it came across as a warped vanity.All in all, The Ride of Our Lives offered a quick look into the interactions of multiple generations. The personal stories fed into the grander narrative of American history.