The Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. John Karras made up the name, with its unwieldy acronym as something of a joke, so he ought to know how to pronounce it, even if nobody else does. RAGBRAY, that is. There from the start, in 1973, a co-host up to the present and a participant in most of the rides, Karras knows RAGBRAI like nobody else -- except perhaps his wife, coauthor, and chief researcher, Ann -- and together they tell its story with headlong exuberance, a healthy dash of wit, and a raconteur's charm.

Focusing on the early years, when numbers and circumstances changed at a head-spinning rate, the Karrases chronicle RAGBRAI from the first ride in 1973 to the thirteenth in 1985, when all hell broke loose. As Don Benson, then of The Des Moines Register's promotion department, remembers it: "We got to the motel and all of a sudden all these other people started showing up". Thus what had begun as a lark, a published invitation to join two of The Register's writers on their bicycle ride from Sioux City to Davenport, started turning into the most successful (and longest running) newspaper promotion since William Randolph Hearst initiated the Mexican-American War.

The Karrases take us from that first ride, with its makeshift arrangements for 250 unexpected cyclists, to the peak of RAGBRAI's popularity and fame. Part memoir, part history, rich with anecdotes and impressions, RAGBRAI: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong celebrates -- and, perhaps, explains -- an event that has drawn hundreds of thousands of people to Iowa from around the world. It is, like its namesake, a wild and wonderful ride.