The Cruise

An intriguing ride with unlikely and highly eccentric New York City tour guide, writer and all-around flaneur Timothy "Speed" Levitch. The David Foster Wallace of tour guides, the voluble Levitch simultaneously assaults and amuses passengers with his encyclopedic knowledge of the city. "The cruise" is what he calls the double-decker bus route on which he gives his idiosyncratic tours, which touch on everything from the lives of literary figures to Levitch's insightful -- if highly subjective -- pronouncements about architecture. But "the cruise" is also Levitch's personal love affair with New York City: He's a man on a mission, hurling words at uncomprehend...