Product Description: A National Book Critics Circle Finalist for CriticismA deeply Malcolmian volume on painters, photographers, writers, and critics.Janet Malcolm's In the Freud Archives and The Journalist and the Murderer, as well as her books about Sylvia Plath and Gertrude Stein, are canonical in the realm of nonfiction―as is the title essay of this collection, with its forty-one "false starts," or serial attempts to capture the essence of the painter David Salle, which becomes a dazzling portrait of an artist...read more

Based on his widely read columns for The New Yorker, Ian Frazier's uproarious first novel, The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days, centers on a profoundly memorable character, sprung from an impressively fertile imagination. Structured as a daybook of sorts, the book follows the Cursing Mommy―beleaguered wife of Larry and mother of two boys, twelve and eight―as she tries (more or less) valiantly to offer tips on how to do various tasks around the home, only to end up on the ground, cursing, surrounded by broken glass. Her voice is somewhere between Phyllis Diller's and Sylvia Plath's: a hilariously desperate housewife with a taste for swearing and large glasses of red wine, who speaks to the frustrations of everyday life. Frazier has demonstrated an astonishing ability to operate with ease in a variety of registers: from On the Rez, an investigation into the lives of modern day Oglala Sioux written with a mix of humor, compassion, and imagination, to Dating Your Mom, a sidesplitting collection of humorous essays that imagines, among other things, how and why you might begin a romance with your mother. Here, Frazier tackles another genre with his usual grace and aplomb, as well as an extra helping of his trademark wicked wit. The Cursing Mommy's failures and weaknesses are our own―and Frazier gives them a loving, satirical spin that is uniquely his own.

Product Description: Over a period of 15 years, Joel Sternfeld travelled across America and took portrait photographs that form, in Douglas R. Nickel's words, "an intelligent, unscientific, interpretive sampling of what Americans looked like at the century's end...read more

The successful photographer shares his idiosyncratic vision of life in America by combining his evocative images with the musings of two great writers.

Product Description: Jim Dow’s American Studies presents a vision of America at once familiar and foreign; a country constantly reinventing itself visually, both discarding and preserving elements of its past, in a relentless, unplanned process of change...read more

Product Description: Selected and introduced by the incomparable Ian Frazier, Humor Me delivers a bumper crop of hilarity from the funniest writers at work today, with proceeds from its sales going to 826 National—the Dave Eggers-founded nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations across the country...read more

Product Description: When The Atlantic Monthly celebrated its 150th anniversary by publishing excerpts from the best writing ever to appear in the magazine, in the category of the humorous essay it chose only four pieces—one by Mark Twain, one by James Thurber, one by Kurt Vonnegut, and Ian Frazier’s 1997 essay “Lamentations of the Father...read more

Celebrating the author's passion for fishing, fish, and the aquatic realm, and capturing the entire angling experience, a profound collection of essays, spanning twenty years, details the author's ability to see the angler's environment all around him, from New York's Grand Central Terminal to the trout streams of the Rocky Mountains. Book available.

The author of On the Rez re-introduces readers to another side of New York City, including a man who climbed the World Trade Center and an eighty-three-year old typewriter repairman, among other colorful characters. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

A tribute to the illustrated works of The New Yorker's Saul Steinberg explores his range of modernist work, in a volume that includes reproductions of each of his 130 covers as well as numerous examples of his interior drawings and portfolios. 25,000 first printing.

Edited by the acclaimed author of On the Rez, the latest volume in the annual series presents a wide-ranging anthology of the finest travel writing published over the past year, selected from a wide variety of magazines, newspapers, and websites and encompassing contributions by Geoff Dyer, Daniel Mendelsohn, Christopher Hitchens, Bruce McCall, and other notable authors. Read by Ian Frazier and others.

A collection of the author's extended essays reporting pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker between 1978 and 1986 includes a profile of Jim Deren, the famous fisherman who had a fishing tackle store near Grand Central Station, a report on bears in Montana, and a portrait of household-hints guru Heloise. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

A zany collection of twenty-five humorous essays range from parody to absurd humor, from farce to outlandish personal fantasy. Reprint.

Celebrating the author's passion for fishing, fish, and the aquatic realm, and capturing the entire angling experience, a profound collection of essays, spanning twenty years, details the author's ability to see the angler's environment all around him, from New York's Grand Central Terminal to the trout streams of the Rocky Mountains. 50,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

The author recounts the history of his family in America from early colonial times to the present using letters and family documents, visiting towns they lived in and founded, and observing them during major historical events, in a powerful and touching view of American history. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

A hilarious collection of essays explores such odd details of American popular culture as Wile E. Coyote's liability suit against the Acme company, Bob Hope's golfing career, the commencement address given by a Satanist college president, and the groundbreaking stand-up comedy of Comrade Stalin. Reprint. 10,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Reportage resists easy definition and comes in many forms, but it reveals hidden truths about people and events that have shaped the world we know. This book is a journey from tumbleweed and American Indian tepees to the house where Bonnie and Clyde did their dirty work to the scene of the murders in Capote's 'In Cold Blood'.

A writer visits the Pine Ridge Reservation with an old Sioux acquaintance and shares his observations of the heroism, humor, and tough spirit that keep these people afloat in the midst of crushing poverty. Reprint. (view table of contents)

Showcases some of America's priceless historical artifacts, documents, and sites that, because of neglect, age, or lack of funding, are in danger of being lost forever. (view table of contents)