Synopses & Reviews
This is a sparkling anthology of the best of The Wall Street Journal's middle column features that have appeared regularly on Page One of The Wall Street Journal for the past fifty years. The A-hed-so called because of its headline style-has evolved into an icon of American feature writing, its major charm being the ability to tell a story with wit and whimsy in 1,500 words or less. It's often a story a reader unfamiliar with the Journal wouldn't expect to find in such an august publication. Indeed, the bit of high-profile real estate that it occupies once held a daily tip sheet on the stock market. But the Journal's legendary managing editor, Barney Kilgore, decided one day that what the Journal's harried business readers really needed was a tonic or a diversion-a story that in his words, floated off the page each day and would be the kind of story you don't expect to read in The Wall Street Journal. That explains why readers recently were treated to a piece on people who now freeze-dry their pets, and why a few years ago they read about the not-uncontroversial efforts to translate the Bible into Klingon. Those are but two examples of stories that actually appear in this unique and fascinating anthology.
Review
Michael Lewis author of Liar's Poker and The New New Thing For more than five decades, the middle column of The Wall Street Journal has been the antidote to boredom...[The writers] find a subject that is merely delightful to write about -- a man who has built a medieval catapult to throw grand pianos across his sheep pasture, for example -- and try to persuade you of its significance. Or not...The quality of the Journal's prose is always highest in its middle column because the people making it are having fun.
Review
Andy Borowitz humorist, New Yorker and New York Times contributor Truth may be stranger than fiction, but it's rarely so funny and absorbing as these classic middle columns from The Wall Street Journal. For A-hed addicts everywhere, this book is an unalloyed treat.
Review
Editor and Publisher Magazine "The Wall Street Journal doesn't usually seem synonymous with humor" but this book "proves it too has a funny bone."
Synopsis
On any given day, millions of
Wall Street Journal readers put aside the serious business and economic news of the day to focus first on the paper's middle column (a.k.a. the A-hed), a virtual sound-bubble for light literary fare -- a short story, a tall tale, an old yarn, a series of vignettes, and other unexpected delights that seem to "float off the page." In this first-ever compendium of middle-column pieces, you'll find an eclectic selection of writings, from the outlandish to the oddly enlightening. Read about:
one man's attempt to translate the Bible into Klingon
sheep orthodontics, pet-freezing, and toad-smoking
being hip in Cairo, modeling at auto shows, piano-throwing
the fate of mail destined for the World Trade Center after 9/11
the plight of oiled otters in Prince William Sound
...and much, much more. Edited by 20-year Journal veteran Ken Wells, and with a foreword by Liar's Poker author Michael Lewis, Floating Off the Page is the perfect elixir for fans of innovative prose in all its forms and function.
About the Author
Michael Lewis is the author of Boomerang, The Big Short, Panic!, Liar’s Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, and Home Game, among other works. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Table of Contents
ContentsForewordIntroduction
CHAPTER ONETHE WAY WE ARE NOW
- Phone Hex""
- "Nothing Personal. We Sue All Our Friends."
- Men Will Be Boys...
- ...And Some Boys Will Stay That Way
- Not Your Mother's Cemetery
- Why the Girl Scouts Sing the Blues
- Pity the Toad
- Ruff! Ruff! Ruffage! Here, Rover, Have a Nice Bean Sprout!
- Bambi Deconstructed
- The Deeper Meaning of Mail
- Luck Among the Ruins
CHAPTER TWOSTYLE
- The Art of the Perfectly Awful
- Roasted Porcupine and Basil, With a Hint of Tire Mark
- Domes of Resistance
- The Agonies of Miss Ag
- And the Winner for Placing the Most Bras Is...
- Men in Brown
- Poetic Justice
- Hair Wars
- Rise Up, Ye Sleeveless Men!
- Men Are from Hardware Stores, Women Are From...
CHAPTER THREETHINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW
- The Fat Man Cometh
- Prisons, Guns and Knickers
- But Will the Klingons Understand Deuteronomy?
- The Steak Tender, the Soup Positively Rodentine
- The Sky, Sometimes, Is Actually Falling
- The Offal Truth
- Carrots, No Schtick
- Your Orthodontist and Ewe
CHAPTER FOURMEN AT WORK
- The Waning Days of Mr. Coke
- Fishing with His Nose
- Blowing Up on the Job
- "Bear Hunting Is Hard on Wives"
- Charles Atlas, Grandpa
- One Writer's Novel Problem
CHAPTER FIVEOBSESSIONS
- The Longest Replay
- The Bean of His Existence
- Y2K Alert! (But It's )
- Claim That Tune!
- This Cup Must Not Be Runneth Over
CHAPTER SIXWHAT WE WROTE HOME ABOUT
- A Navy and Its Demons (and Dragons)
- A Fence Without End
- The Last Word
- Touring God's Country
- Smoke Got in Their Eyes
- Yes, We Have No Bananas
- Of Counterculture, Counter Cultures and Pig Rights
- A Night Among the Snipers
- Things Are Hopping in New York
- The Struggles of Otter
CHAPTER SEVENPLAY'S THE THING
- Fish Story
- Golfing in the Spring: One Hole, Par
- Having a Fling or Two
- Why Tiger Is Glad He's Not Japanese
- Not Your Father's Buick
CHAPTER EIGHTNOTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES
- Naked Assumptions
- Little Feats
- China, in Stride
- No, This Isn't How They Invented Chicken Tenders
- Why the Future Isn't Coming Up Roses
CHAPTER NINESCRIBES, DESCRIBING
- Traveling Cheap, but Not Sleazy
- In Praise of Small Words
- Z-less in Zanzibar
- Being Hip in Cairo
- Check Out That New Model -- Uh, I Don't Mean the Car
- Puzzlements
- Play It Again, Ma'am
Acknowledgments