My Heart Is an Idiot Essays

Named a Best Book of the Year by Vanity Fair, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, and NPR

In My Heart Is an Idiot, Davy Rothbart is looking for love in all the wrong places. Constantly. He falls helplessly in love with pretty much every girl he meets — and rarely is the feeling reciprocated. Time after time, he hops in a car and tears halfway across America with his heart on his sleeve. He's continually coming up with outrageous schemes and adventures, which he always manages to pull off. Well, almost always. But even when things don't work out, Rothbart finds meaning and humor in every moment.

Whether it's confronting a scammer who takes money from aspiring writers, sifting through a murder case that's left a potentially innocent friend in prison, or waking up naked on a park bench in New York City, nothing and no one is off limits. And it's all recounted in Davy's singular, spirited literary voice, “an intriguing hybrid of timeless midwestern warmth and newfangled jive talk,” in the words of Sarah Vowell.

“This book is f--cking great!” Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“Rothbart...is a born raconteur, with a soldiers can-do spirit and a poets mercurial soul.” The New Yorker

“[Rothbart's] irreverent brand of humor translates seamlessly to the page....He has an unforced curiosity and a natural empathy that make him an ideal traveling....Killingly funny.” The Washington Post

“Davy Rothbart has the humor and purity of heart you want and need in an observer of contemporary American life.” Dave Eggers

“Substitute Dr. Dre for Charlie Parker, and Davy Rothbart's new collection of sixteen essays reads like early Jack Kerouac....A brutally honest, heartfelt, and clever collection.” Time Out (New York)

“[Davy's] capacity for serendipity and overshare is infectious.” The New York Times

Davy Rothbart is a frequent contributor to This American Life and a variety of magazines, the founder of Found Magazine and the editor of its various bestselling anthologies, and the author of The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas. He splits his time between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Los Angeles, California.