Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him once more. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine. From armoring the windows with LP covers...

The author presents a collection of three animal-themed essays. In The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck, a group of complete strangers bitterly discuss the order of things within the animal kingdom. In Hello Kitty, a miserable alcoholic cat attends AA. In The Squirrel and the Chipmunk, two lovers are torn apart by their quarreling families.

This personal narrative surveys the panorama of our world, past and present

Brings together, for the first time, the best of Gladwell's writing from The New Yorker in the past decade, including: the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill; the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz; spotlighting Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen; and the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer." Gladwell also explores intelligence tests, ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias," and...

With a skewed sense of wit uniquely his own, satirist and popular NPR storyteller David Sedaris presents a collection of short stories and essays, wherein home surgery and an elf-abusing Santa prevail

Welcome to the unique world of Bailey White. Her aunt Belle may take you to see the alligator she's taught to bellow on command. Her uncle Jimbuddy may appall you with his knack for losing pieces of himself. Most of all, you may succumb utterly to the charms of Bailey's mama--who may take you to Rosey's, a North Florida juke joint so raunchy it scared Ernest Hemingway, and then tuck you into an antique bed that has the disconcerting habit of folding...

Carefully culled from her past work, The Abundance is quintessential Annie Dillard, delivered in her fierce and undeniably singular voice, filled with detail and metaphysical fact. The pieces within will exhilarate both admiring fans and a new generation of readers, having been "re-framed and re-hung," with fresh editing and reordering by the author, to situate these now seminal works within her larger canon.

Essays on Nate Shaw, Harry Caudill, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, diversity, waste, eating, local culture, consumption, conservation, environmental concerns, and other topics.

Combines commentary on American society and the world at large with reflections on being a woman, a writer, and a mother. These essays were first written for Newsweek and The New York Times.

Offers a collection of humorous stories about Southern characters, places, and goings-on, from leaky mansions to fishing camps to one-room schoolhouses.