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The Way the World Works
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Author
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Nicholson Baker.
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Publisher
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Simon & Schuster
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Format
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hardcover
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Product Dimensions
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8.75
x
5.6
x
1
inches
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ISBN
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9781416572473
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Pages/Publication Date
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317/2012
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Daedalus Item Code
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30630
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This item is not available.
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Description
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In this collection of essays spanning 15 years, the author of Human Smoke and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Double Fold ranges from international political controversy to details 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. Nicholas Baker writes about kite string and about the moment he met his wife, and 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, while 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 reveals his keen mind, generous spirit, and far-flung curiosity. "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."—NYTimes Magazine "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."—Washington Post "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 G.K. Chesterton and Max Beerbohm, writing winning fantasies upon whatever chance thoughts may come into his head."—Financial Times (London)
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