“A razor-sharp eye … a master class in top-notch journalism.” —Entertainment Weekly
“He reaches to the core of the human condition. … A mixture of compelling writing style and deep reflection.” —Denver Post
“A coherent, often funny, even lovely rendering of one man’s curious embrace of the world.” —Washingtonian
“Marvelous. Worth reading for the writing alone.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“In this collection of 26 pieces Stuever presents himself as a champion of the underdog, the has-been, the sweet and low-down. … His essays often give surprising depth and richness to the anonymous unknowns.” —Seattle Weekly
“Stuever’s voice maintains a comfortable balance between the sardonic and the empathetic. His is a refreshing take on America.” —Chicago Tribune
“Hank Stuever pays loving homage to America’s soft, strange underbelly. … A keen tour guide to places we’ve passed but never fully appreciated.”—Texas Monthly
“Stuever writes about the most important things of all—the yearning, the dreams, the frailty and the fear that make up the human psyche in early 21st-centerury America. … That he is able to make you laugh about it all is just the icing on the writerly cake.” —Albuquerque Journal
“Stuever is, in short, a rare creature: a pedant who cherishes dreamers. His knack for standing back and simply noticing things is … contagious.” —Austin American-Statesman
“Insightful and arresting…Stuever neatly balances the macabre humor with a respect for the dignity of his subjects that’s all too lacking in the overly-ironic work of other self-described chroniclers of American by-ways. Simply put, Off Ramp is a trip worth taking.” —Metro Weekly (Washington, DC)
“Newspaper readers who haven’t run across [Stuever’s] stuff before have been missing out. He’s a terrific writer, and Off Ramp is a treat to read.” —San Antonio Express-News
“[Off Ramp] hilariously chronicles America’s ‘crap crisis,’—over 9.7 billion cubic feet of stuff is saved in rental storage units—but also reveals our fear of leaving the past behind and points out the inherent loneliness of a life devoted to consumerism.”—Out magazine
“Stuever is clearly an aficionado of the absurd and surreal in American life … a fan of the underdog, of the uncelebrated but all-too representative cultural traits that define us as a nation. … Why read one more story about the Hamptons or Hollywood, about Tom Cruise or Jennifer Lopez or Lance Armstrong? Read this book instead.”—Nancy Klingener, Solares Hill (Key West, Florida)
“Two of [these essays] were Pulitzer Prize finalists in feature writing. If the gods were just (they aren’t), they would just go ahead and name the feature writing prize after Stuever. He’s that good. … Stuever’s project is to resuscitate all of American life as it’s really lived, without sentiment and without resorting to the little boxes we dishonestly force our lives into. Stuever wants to prove that our little stories, told truly, have their own drama, their own significance.” —Barry Johnson, The Oregonian
“This tender, funny, compelling collection is an homage to the rhythms and cadences of modern life.”—Publishers Weekly
“Observant, compassionate. … Dig[s] deeper into our domestic isolation and wanderlust.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Humorous and poignant portraits. … Never before has Kmart been written about with such melancholy.”—SOMA magazine