A breakout writer at The New Yorker examines the fractures at the center of contemporary culture with verve, deftness, and intellectual ferocity--for readers who've wondered what Susan Sontag would have been like if she had brain damage from the internet.

"Some of America's best reporters and thinkers offer an urgent look at a country in chaos in this collection of timely, often prophetic articles from The Atlantic"--

"Comedian and 'Live from Here' head writer Tom Papa, author of Your Dad Stole My Rake, tackles the modern condition in a warm (and clean) group of short essays. Exploring his favorite topics-- how people really live in modern America and what's truly good and wonderful about our lives-- You're Doing Great features 75 quick-take essays, including: You Don't Have to Live Your Best Life, Don't Open the Mail, I'm So Baked, I'm Going to Mars--If My Wife...

"P. J. O'Rourke says we've worked ourselves into a state of anger and perplexity, and it's no surprise because perplexed and angry are what Americans have been since the Roanoke Colony got lost. This astute and entertaining look at the state of these United States includes essays on everything from our fraught history ("O Beautiful for . . . Pilgrim Feet?") to the political effects of social media ("Whose Bright Idea Was It to Make Sure that Every...

Combining history and sociology, a public policy professor discusses the shift in American life that has disconnected neighbors from one another, limiting exposure to different types of people, ideas, and lifestyles.

"After a decade abroad, the National Book Award -- and Pulitzer Prize -- winning writer Evan Osnos returns to three places he has lived in the United States-Greenwich, CT; Clarksburg, WV; and Chicago, IL -- to illuminate the origins of America's political fury"--

"Quichotte, an aging traveling salesman obsessed with the "unreal real" of TV, falls in impossible love with a queen of the screen; while obsessively writing her love letters, he wishes an imaginary son, Sancho, into existence. Together they set off across America in Quichotte's trusty Chevy Cruze to find her and convince her of his love. Meanwhile, Quichotte's tragicomic story is being told by the author who created him: Brother, a mediocre spy novelist...

Don't just see the sights, get to know the people. Who can afford not to understand the USA? Underneath the gleaming smile of American popular culture lies a rich and complex society that brims with contrasts and contradictions. It is a culture of rugged individualism, of go-getters, of high-tech high achievers. At the same time it is a deeply religious country with a quiet devotion to church and charitable works.