Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (C. Ad 2009) in a Large City

In Very Recent History, Choire Sicha, two-time editor of Gawker and cofounder of The Awl, manages to do three seemingly disparate things at once. First, he's written a kind of guide to our times for a visitor from far in the future. Our everyday life has never looked so foreign and strange. Second, he's taken readers on a gossipy, episodic romp through the romantic and erotic lives of a group of young gay men trying to find love and/or sex in New York City. Finally, and most impressively, Sicha has managed to describe, in frustrating detail, how unlivable New York has become to all but the most wealthy of its citizens. I've never read a book quite like this one. Utterly sui generis.

by Adam P.

In one of the greatest cities in the world, the richest man in town is the Mayor. Billionaires shed apartments like last season's fashion trends, even as the country's economy turns inside out and workers are expelled from the City's glass towers. The young and careless go on as they always have, getting laid and getting laid off, falling in and falling out of love, and trying to navigate the strange world they traffic in: the Internet, complex financial markets, credit cards, pop stars, microplane cheese graters, and sex apps.

A true-life fable of money, sex, and politics, Very Recent History follows a man named John and his circle of friends, lovers, and enemies. It is a book that pieces together our every day, as if it were already forgotten.