(Rushin, Steve) Steve Rushin is a writer for Sports Illustrated and the 2006 National Sportswriter of the Year. He is the author of four nonfiction books and a novel. His work has been collected in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Magazine Writing anthologies. Sting-Ray Afternoons (Little, Brown and Company) is a wild and bittersweet memoir of a classic ’70s childhood. It’s a story of the 1970s. Of a road trip in a wood-paneled station wagon, with the kids in the way-back, singing along to the Steve Miller Band. Brothers waking up early on Saturday mornings for five consecutive hours of cartoons and advertising jingles that they’ll be humming all day. A father-one of 3M’s greatest and last eight-track-salesman fathers-traveling across the country on the brand-new Boeing 747, providing for his family but wanting nothing more than to get home. With sidesplitting commentary, Rushin creates a vivid picture of a decade of wild youth, cultural rebirth, and the meaning of parental, brotherly, sisterly, whole lotta love.