| For many people, a formative mix of childhood memories happened in a car. Perhaps that’s why driving holds such a romantic place in the American imagination. In 2003, The New Yorker published a Personal History by the celebrated staff writer and editor Roger Angell, in which he recalls car trips taken with family and friends throughout his childhood, seven decades earlier. Angell reminisces about a weekend outing with his mother and future stepfather, E. B. White—an editor and writer at this magazine, respectively—that ended in disaster on the Bronx River Parkway; a journey home from a school trip to the Chicago World’s Fair; a scorching summer drive that inspired a sweet moment with his sister’s friend; and a spontaneous Sunday-afternoon getaway from boarding school. Together, the stories capture a bygone era when car travel was “bumpier and curvier . . . with more traffic lights and billboards, more cows and hillside graveyards, no air-conditioning and almost no interstates.” The piece is at once affecting and funny and finds the universal in the personal. Angell evokes the joy and intimacy shared with fellow-passengers on trips to places planned and unexpected. As Angell declares, “Driving, for all its drags and trouble, puts us together.” You’ll be thankful that he took you along for the ride. | 
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