Stuff
Product Details
Simon & Schuster, August 2012
eBook, 336 pages
ISBN-10: 141658398X
ISBN-13: 9781416583981
Description
New York Times bestselling author Nicholson Baker, “who writes like no one else in America” (Newsweek), has assembled his best nonfiction writing over the last fifteen years, a trove of original and provocative pieces.
The Way the World Works, Nicholson Baker’s second essay collection, ranges over the map of life to examine what ails us, what eases our pain, and what gives us joy. Baker—recently hailed as “one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time” by The New York Times Book Review—moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the OED, and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola. In the book’s title essay, Baker surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at Modern Warfare 2; in a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, he describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism. Through all these pieces (for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications), Baker shines the light of an inexpugnable curiosity; The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master.
The Way the World Works, Nicholson Baker’s second essay collection, ranges over the map of life to examine what ails us, what eases our pain, and what gives us joy. Baker—recently hailed as “one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time” by The New York Times Book Review—moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the OED, and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola. In the book’s title essay, Baker surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at Modern Warfare 2; in a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, he describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism. Through all these pieces (for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications), Baker shines the light of an inexpugnable curiosity; The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master.
“Baker is one of the most beautiful, original and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades . . . and takes a kind of mad scientist’s delight in the way things work and how the world is put together.”
-- Charles McGrath, The New York Times Magazine
“His prose is so luminescent and so precise it manually recalibrates our brains.”
-- Lev Grossman, Time
“Nicholson Baker is such a swell, smart writer that he rarely--maybe never--tips his hand. . . . In Baker's view, the mundane, closely enough observed, may be the skate key to the sublime.”
-- Carolyn See, The Washington Post
“Baker writes with appealing charm. He clowns and shows off rambles and pounces hard; he says acute things, extravagant things, terribly funny things.”
-- Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Nicholson Baker's Books
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House of HolesNicholson Baker's House of Holes is gleefully provocative, off-the-charts sex novel that is unlike anything you’ve read.Read More
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The AnthologistThe Anthologist, narrated by poet Paul Chowder, captures all the warmth, wit, and extraordinary prose style that have made Baker an American master.Read More -
Human SmokeA meticulously researched perspective on the political, social, religious and economic events throughout the world in the years leading up to WWII.Read More
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