The Way the World Works
Essays
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Nicholson Baker, who “writes like no one else in America” (Newsweek), here assembles his best short pieces from the last fifteen years.
The Way the World Works, Baker’s second nonfiction collection, ranges over the map of life to examine what troubles us, what eases our pain, and what brings us joy. Baker moves 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. He writes about kite string and 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 charts the rise of e-readers; in a third 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. The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whether it's his two-page reflection on why he likes the telephone, or his heady tome on why he is a pacifist, novelist and essayist Baker (Double Fold, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award) is a delight to read. In this diverse collection of essays, spanning 15 years, Baker offers gorgeous prose and poses important questions about our era of digital readership. As he notes in his essay on the Kindle 2, there is a distinction between a writer's work and its presentation in book form. Many essays staunchly defend the reading of print books and newspapers, including "Narrow Ruled," in which he shares how he reads closely "when I come across something I really like in a book, I put a little dot in the margin." A proud defender of libraries and newspapers, Baker acknowledges the perception of him as "a weirdo cultist, a ringleader" for books. While his musings on video games and the neighborhood trash dump are memorable, the collection's real value lies in its essays on reading. Baker practices what he preaches by collecting his own work, so that somewhere, people will be turning paper pages. Though it would have been wonderful if the collection included a new, unpublished essay, readers of this book will still find themselves agreeing with him: books are still worth getting.
