I thought this book was mixed. Some of the stories were fascinating and brilliant, and others I found boring. Overall, I did enjoy it, and would recommend to someone trying to get into nonfiction. ( )

It has been a while since I read a book that I felt deserved five stars, but here it is. If it were possible, I would probably give it six stars. This is a collection of columns first written by the Pulitzer Prize winning author for publication in The Washington Post. They cover such diverse humorous topics as the author’s search for the town that is truly the “Armpit of America,” his search for and reintroduction to the girl he had a crush on in 2nd grade and had not seen since, and his time spent with “The Great Zucchini,” a children’s clown in Washington D.C. who is so popular that he is booked years in advance for huge sums of money, yet lives little better than a homeless person. On the opposite end of the spectrum, he covers truly serious topics such as the effects of war injuries and PTSD in his extended interview with Garry Trudeau, the author and illustrator of the Doonesbury comic, and how it feels to live with fear as he visits locations that suffer frequent suicide bombings. By far, the most powerful essay is the heart-wrenching, tear-inducing, almost impossible-to-read story of parents who have left a child in a car on a hot summer day with fatal consequences. Weingarten’s writing is beautiful. You MUST read this book! ( )

This book is an excellent collection of articles from The Washington Post by the feature writer Gene Weingarten. Weingarten’s human-interest articles are well written, entertaining, and thought provoking. He has the ability to make almost anything interesting. Some articles had me laughing aloud, others left me with tears streaming down my cheeks. I think there is something in the collection for everyone. ( )

I don't usually like collections, but these aren't normal short stories. These are feature stories from the Washington Post, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, that I would otherwise have never read. I am glad I got the opportunity to read these truly powerful stories.



A quote I liked from the Doonesbury article: "It is a cliché, and it is also true, that humor springs from existential pain - from a need to blunt the awareness that life is essentially a fatal disease of unpredictable symptoms and unknown duration." ( )

I don't usually like collections, but these aren't normal short stories. These are feature stories from the Washington Post, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, that I would otherwise have never read. I am glad I got the opportunity to read these truly powerful stories.



A quote I liked from the Doonesbury article: "It is a cliché, and it is also true, that humor springs from existential pain - from a need to blunt the awareness that life is essentially a fatal disease of unpredictable symptoms and unknown duration." ( )