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Found

"I love Found!"

"A fascinating and compelling collection that will break your heart."

"Writers resent Found. How would you feel if you spent months and years slaving over stories when these talented rubberneckers can't seem to walk their dogs without tripping over one teensy epic after another? No fair!"

"A treasury of trash, a wonderfully weird collection...a fascinating glimpse into the wackier depths of America's collective subconscious."

"Found is a diary of the human race put together with affection and love."

"Found's contents are sometimes bizarre, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes downright hilarious, and other times a combination of all three."

"The lost scraps of writing in this book are perfect short stories."

"Rothbart probably never listened to his mother when she told him not to pick up trash. Which is good: Otherwise he might have never started Found magazine."

"Davy Rothbart's brilliant idea was to create a forum for folks to submit the revealing detritus of life...The notes are sometimes funny, sometimes mundane, sometimes horrifying and always a beautiful peek into the fascinating private lives of others."

"Found both magazine and book, is a voyeur's dream. Exploring its pages, one gets a giddy high from its privileged, unauthorized glimpse into the private lives of strangers. Some of the stuff is hilarious, some of it achingly sad or pathetic, but nothing is less than human -- and nothing is all that different from what most of us have thought or written at one time or another."

"Rothbart's collection of discarded love letters, doodles, to-do lists and other insignificant scraps of paper found by himself and others offers a peephole view into ordinary lives. Turns out, the detritus of our lives can say as much about us as the things we treasure."

"Found is a fun read because it is weird; compelling because it is unexpected. These short snippets of daily life become individual tales, scraps turn into sagas. And the abruptness of some pieces left me wanting more."

"From a purely sociological-anthropological standpoint, the sampling of items featured in Found magazine offers keen insights into our society: We are a nation of bad spellers and even worse cussers. Our teens are oversexed and angry, yet giddy in love (many I's are dotted with hearts). We are careless with our belongings. We are resilient -- writing gives us an outlet that helps us survive everything from a missing cat to a parent's death."

"It's a brilliant compendium of hilarious, creepy, poignant and just plain weird slips of paper that somehow lost their rightful owners."

"By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the contents of Found are a portrait of the human condition as told through scraps rescued from the garbage."

"The aim of Found is...merely to share these small bits of paper, these scraps of humanity, with like-minded voyeurs...While publishing these notes is in many ways cruel (although identifying details are altered to preserve anonymity), Found doesn't frame these folded, crinkled treasures in a snarky, fortified with irony fashion. Rothbart, rather than being a snickering wise-ass or a cooler-than-thou hipster, admits to finding many of these notes touching...The avalanche of reality shows on television and the resurgence of documentary films might offer proof we crave authenticity. A cultural commentator could successfully argue that these misplaced memos offer a raw, unfiltered, unguarded peek into the collective psyche, an antidote to prefab pop stars and varnished Hollywood celebs."

"Anger and humor, sorrow and exuberance all sprout side by side in the pages of Rothbart's Found magazine, a collection of notes, photos and other lost items contributed by readers."

"...treasury of trash...a fascinating glimpse into the wackier depths of America's collective subconscious."