Growing Up and Getting Old Behind the Wheel

Witty and softly sardonic, William Schiff’s autobiographical romp describes his lifelong travels from early childhood to the Golden Years. Growing Up and Getting Old Behind the Wheel: An American Auto Biography is framed in a web of Americana, including cars he has ridden in, driven, modified, and even stolen. The span of his story is peppered with allusions to the locales, books, films, music, and social politics of the times he has experienced. He describes his youthful descent with friends into light criminality—his incarceration, and his ultimate salvation and redemption through America’s universities, rather than through its Churches. He sketches his menial jobs as a youth, as well as his later roles as student, university professor, parent, behavioral scientist, and retiree. If you’ve lived in America between 1940 and today, you’ll want to come along on the engrossing scenic drive through his vivid memories.