Giving Good Weight
by John McPhee | 
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
by Joan Didion | 
The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup
by Susan Orlean | 
Living Out Loud
by Anna Quindlen |
Just Enough Liebling
by A. J. Liebling | 
Pulphead
by John Jeremiah Sullivan | 
Step Across This Line
by Salman Rushdie | 
Table of Contents
by John McPhee | 
Halls of Fame
by John D'Agata | 
The Ecstasy of Influence
by Jonathan Lethem | 
After Henry
by Joan Didion | 
Both Flesh and Not
by David Foster Wallace | 
Pieces of the Frame
by John McPhee | 
Feel Free
by Zadie Smith | 
The Patch
by John McPhee | 
Habitations of the Word
by William H. Gass | 
Inside The Whale And Other Essays
by George Orwell | 
The Purloined Clinic
by Janet Malcolm | 
The Wet Collection
by Joni Tevis | 
The Next American Essay
by John D'Agata |
Readers know from his now classic Lenin's Tomb that Remnick is a superb portraitist who can bring his subjects to life and reveal them in such surprising ways as to justify comparison to Dickens, Balzac, or Proust. In this collection, Remnick's gift for character is sharper than ever, whether he writes about Gary Hart stumbling through life after Donna Rice or Mario Cuomo, who now presides over a Saturday morning radio talk show, fielding questions from crackpots, or about Michael Jordan's awesome return to the Chicago Bulls -- or Reggie Jackson's last times at bat.