Synopses & Reviews
New York Times bestselling author Nicholson Baker has assembled a “provocative and entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) collection of his most original and brilliant pieces from the last fifteen years.Hailed as “one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time” by The New York Times Book Review, Nicholson Baker’s second nonfiction collection ranges over the map of life to examine human pain and joy, trifles and tribulation. He moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, David Remnick, and the Venetian gondola. He writes about the moment he met his wife, and he surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at Modern Warfare 2. In a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, Baker describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism; in another, he chronicles his Freedom of Information lawsuit against the San Francisco Public Library. Through all these pieces, many written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The American Scholar, Baker shines the light of an inexpugnable curiosity.
With a voice deemed “captivating…singular…irresistible” (Harper’s), Baker combines singular ideas with utterly seductive prose. Now in paperback, The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master.
Review
“Baker is one of the most beautiful, original and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades . . . and takes a kind of mad scientist's delight in the way things work and how the world is put together.”
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“[A] winning new book. . . . This singular writer . . . can mount an argument skillfully and deliver an efficient conclusive kick.”
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“Nicholson Baker is such a swell, smart writer that he rarely - maybe never - tips his hand.... In Baker's view the mundane, closely enough observed, may be the skate key to the sublime.”
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“A fundamentally radical author . . . you can never be sure quite where Baker is going to take you. . . . [He] is an essayist in the tradition of GK Chesterton and Max Beerbohm, writing winning fantasies upon whatever chance thoughts may come into his head.”
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“What these works share is a sense that how we think, our idiosyncratic dance with both experience and memory, defines who we are.”
Review
“His prose is so luminescent and so precise it manually recalibrates our brains.”
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“Baker looks at the world around us in a way that is not only artful and entertaining but instructive.”
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"Mr. Baker is a wise and amiable cultural commentator worth listening to. . . .
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“Baker's new essay collection, The Way the World Works, is always absorbing, merging his interest in solid, tangible objects with his devotion to the life of the mind. . . . simply dazzling.”
Review
“Exhilarating . . . Eye-opening . . . Baker continues his project of bringing new dimensions and idiosyncrasies to the personal essay, which he is devoted to reviving and reinventing.”
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“Baker writes with appealing charm. He clowns and shows off rambles and pounces hard; he says acute things, extravagant things, terribly funny things.” Carolyn See - The Washington Post
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“If only more of the literary world worked the way Baker does. . . . You cannot deny the courage of the writer. . . . Baker is singular.”
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“Baker is one of the most beautiful, original and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades . . . and takes a kind of mad scientist’s delight in the way things work and how the world is put together.” Charles McGrath
Review
“His prose is so luminescent and so precise it manually recalibrates our brains.” The New York Times Magazine
Review
“Nicholson Baker is such a swell, smart writer that he rarely—maybe never—tips his hand. . . . In Baker's view, the mundane, closely enough observed, may be the skate key to the sublime.” Lev Grossman - Time
Review
“Mr. Baker is a wise and amiable cultural commentator worth listening to. . . . [his] prose is polished, witty . . . his essays are always provocative and entertaining.”
Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Nicholson Baker has assembled a "provocative and entertaining" (The Wall Street Journal) collection of his most original and brilliant pieces from the last fifteen years.
From political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the OED, and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola, Nicholson Baker ranges over the map of life to examine what troubles us, what eases our pain, and what brings us joy. The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master.
Synopsis
From political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the OED, and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola, Nicholson Baker ranges over the map of life to examine what troubles us, what eases our pain, and what brings us joy. The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master.
About the Author
Nicholson Baker is the author of nine novels and four works of nonfiction, including Double Fold, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and House of Holes, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in Maine with his family.