Candacy A. Taylor
Taylor became fascinated with waitresses and diner culture when waiting tables to pay for her graduate school education. Her thesis, this book, focused on the “lifer” waitress – women who have waited tables for decades. With a combination of research and interviews, Taylor soon dispels the notion …
Zac Bissonnette
Selected wisdom from murderers, stock swindlers, and Lance Armstrong
Here are some of the sounds you will likely make while reading this book: Pppft! WHA? Unnnggh! Ha! ….ohhhhhhh. Bissonnette has hand-picked some of the most delightfully un-selfaware bits of advice for some really lousy people. Bernie Madoff’s investment …
Adrienne Salinger
Despite one in seven Americans living alone, being single is still viewed with a combination of suspicion and pity. Yet many people love and choose to live along. Salinger’s subjects run the gamut from those forced into singlehood by the death of family or a spouse to those …
Kyle Cassidy
Cassidy attempts to give an even-handed overview of the average gun owner in their home. Accompanying the gun owners are quick bios on the types of guns, professions of the owners and their pets and children’s names. From utili-kilted Rambo wannabes to teen girls with their shotguns, armed …
Dr. Sam Gosling
Gosling presents a quick and dirty overview of his snooping research. Learn how to tell how introverted, neurotic, conscientious, agreeable or narcissistic your friends, family and coworkers are. What is a messy desk the sign of? What message is a coworker sending when their family photos face …
Paco Underhill
What is wrong with the mall? Well, everything, according to consumer behavior specialist Underhill. And, he adds, the rise and fall of the mall has been almost entirely avoidable. Going through a standard mall visit, Underhill points out the numerous ways malls fail to satisfy the consumer. From …
Joseph Epstein
Snobbery often entails taking a petty, superficial, or irrelevant distinction and, so to say, running with it.
Epstein’s study of snobbery should be considered a guilty pleasure, replete with snarky little personal stories. His main premise is snobbery is a strangely unique phenomenon created by Americans. Our democracy …
Peter Sagal
Host of NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, Sagal’s voice is all that a good liberal midwesterner should be. Whether discussing attending a swinger’s party, gambling, eating a 24-course gourmet meal or studying pornography, Sagal sounds wry, amused and slightly embarrassed, with strains of the midwest “well, to …
Edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Shappell
Offill and Shappell edited another book I started a few years ago, The Friend Who Got Away, a collection of stories by women who had “broken up” with a best friend and which I found too depressing to finish. Money Changes Everything…
My Life in Orange (Tim Guest) and Bhagwan, the God that Failed (Hugh Milne)
Both of these fascinating autobiographies tell of the authors’ lives living in ashrams of the Guru Shree Bhagwan. Guest moved into his first communal ashram at about age 5 when, after short bouts with other major …
Jennifer Niesslein
In high school I had a friend who decided to try some experiments out on himself that he had read about. He simultaneously ate only brown bread and apple juice and slept 2 hours at night and another hour in the afternoon. According to his science journal, this …
Jake Halpern
Halpern’s wonderfully interesting (and far too short) book Fame Junkies explores the world of people drawn to fame. Divided into three sections, Halpern interviews and follows a legion of wanna-be child stars and their families, a group of celebrity assistants and a clutch of die-hard fans. Each group …
Rebecca Mead
The short article last fall in Salon on Mead’s book was enough to get me interested in this book. Like being unable to stop staring at a car accident, Mead’s book is grotesquely fascinating. Laying out the modern mania to have the biggest, most extravagant and wedding possible, …
Shari Caudron
If you are a hobby-bobber like me, this book will hit a major nerve with you. Author Caudron tells of her burning desire to have… a burning desire. Bouncing from one interest to another, she never found that one thing that really tripped her trigger – the hobby …
Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman
Abrahamson and Freedman attempt to dispel the myth that mess is time-consuming and a sign of a lazy person. Mess, they argue, is in fact conducive to creativity, time-saving and a sign of a healthy mind. Using examples of everything from the ease and ability …
Portraits by Kip Fulbeck Forward by Sean Lennon
I saw this little gem in the pop culture rack a few weeks ago and couldn’t resist snagging it, despite my already precariously towering heap. Fulbeck’s collection is a photo essay of hapa – people of part Asian, part “other” descent. The …
