"For thirty years, Singer’s been MVP at The New Yorker . . . searching the country for superslices of Americana,” praised Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Singer’s previous book, Somewhere in America. His newest collection, Character Studies, is filled with profiles of Americans that Singer thinks we ought to meet. Whether it’s about the sleight-of-hand master Ricky Jay, the ardent bibliophile Michael Zinman, or better-known personalities such as the hype artist Donald Trump or the meticulous filmmaker Martin Scorsese, Singer’s elegant, incisive journalism uncovers the passions that drive the ordinary, the quirky, and the truly, fanatically fixated.

Tom Brokaw raves, "Mark Singer's essays are an insightful, hilarious, and instructive trip through the back roads and main streets of American culture," and this is true whether he’s interviewing a devoted fan of the cowboy movie star Tom Mix or the self-selected intelligentsia of El Paso, Texas, who are determined to recover the skull of Pancho Villa. Singer’s keen ear and sharp eye are sure to appeal to anyone interested in oddballs, America, or the conviction that character is destiny.

"Many, if not all, of the profiles in Singer's latest work (after Somewhere in America) are already lodged firmly in the memories of New Yorker readers, and not just because so many of his subjects — Donald Trump, Ricky Jay, Martin Scorsese — are so remarkable. In fact, it's often in the stories about lesser-known personalities, from a Japanese-American farming family that supplies California's hottest restaurants with their vegetables, to a convention of Tom Mix fans in Las Vegas, that Singer's talents, including his ability to seem at once sympathetic to and skeptical of his subjects, are most visible. While a remembrance of his colleague Joseph Mitchell, who famously spent his last three decades at the magazine without completing a new article, highlights Singer's more personal, introspective side, in most of these stories he's a semidetached observer: you never forget he's there, but your attention is never diverted from the main attraction. In an introduction, Singer describes his reporting as 'sublimated voyeurism' and 'cultural anthropology.' The dual descriptions perfectly encapsulate his entertaining yet informative journalism, and the work itself places him at the head of the New Yorker's current team of staff writers. Agent, Jin Auh. (July 12)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

CONTENTS Introduction 1 Secrets of the Magus 5 Trump Solo 48 Joe Mitchell’s Secret 81 La Cabeza de Villa 97 The Chinos’ Artful Harvest 114 Keepers of the Flame 154 Mom Overboard! 191 The Book Eater 206 The Man Who Forgets Nothing 227