Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Auriel W

Blake Molmen

Dani Shahar

Luis Javier Campos nieto

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In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really) live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World, who’ve generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina—and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don’t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan’s work.

The breakout book from "the funniest writer in America"—not to mention an official Genius—a trade paperback original and his first nonfiction collection ever. George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is composed of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther Forbes, and leads the reader across the rocky political landscape of modern America. Emblazoned with his trademark wit and singular vision, Saunders's endeavor into the art of the essay is testament to his exceptional range and ability as a writer and thinker.

  The Pulitzer Prize-winning author--"an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)--offers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his acclaimed, award-winning fiction.    A shy manifesto, an impractical handbook, the true story of a fabulist, an entire life in parts and pieces, Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.   What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even as--simply because--it goes on being written every day. As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as the father of four young Americans, Chabon presents his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, as a theme played--on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key--by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor.   At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic. 

What happened to Nicholson Baker, I wonder? The earliest pieces collected in The Size of Thoughts are so dazzling that, when I first dipped into them, I nearly fell off my barstool. (Okay, it was actually a food court stool, but still, I was all set to jab my plastic fork in my chest out of sheer, dyspeptic envy). Written for The Atlantic Monthly when Baker was still in his mid-twenties (bastard), these early pieces are exquisite little riffs on philosophical themes: the concept of rarity, the process of changing one’s mind etc. They’re the type of stylish, whimsical things a modern-day Lamb might write – assuming he were funny and, um, not dull.So the young Baker is a pretty cool guy, if coolness is compatible with extreme bookishness (and I kind of hope it is). But then, about halfway through the Reagan administration, Baker changes course. He gives up his funky, downtown loft and moves out to the literary suburbs, where he loses himself in harmless, married-guy enthusiasms: model airplanes, film projectors, the manufacture of nail clippers (I shit you not). He’s still a genius, mind you, but he’s a genius in sandals and knee-high socks, watering his perfectly manicured lawn… That’s not to say there isn’t some good stuff even in the most obsessive and geeked-out of the later essays. I appreciate his fealty to the commonplace, his loving attention to the homely hardware of modern life. And nobody, but nobody, can describe complex industrial processes with Baker’s degree of oddly poetic exactitude (granted, nobody else would even want to). What’s missing here is just that drop of youthful insolence you find in the early writings, where he had the audacity to be brilliant and precious and skewed, all at the same time. The grown-up Baker is more responsible, and a few shades less purple, than his younger self, but he’s also that much less charming. And I’ve got to say I miss the insufferable prick. 

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