Description

A Best Book Of The Year

Time • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Kansas City Star San Francisco Chronicle • NPR • Seattle Times

A shy manifesto, an impractical handbook, the true story of a fabulist, an entire life in parts and pieces, Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers addresses with his characteristic warmth and lyric wit the all-important question: What does it mean to be a man today?

About the Author

MICHAEL CHABON is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, A Model World, Wonder Boys, Werewolves in Their Youth, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Summerland (a novel for children), The Final Solution, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Maps and Legends and Gentlemen of the Road. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children. Visit him online at www.michaelchabon.com.

Praise for Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son…

“Chabon brings his prodigiously entertaining verbal intelligence to a very personal investigation of what it means to be a father, a son, and a husband.”
-Lev Grossman, Time (Top 10 Nonfiction Books Citation)

“Chabon takes a big, fat swing at the essay form with his second collection and achieves success. . . . These warm and thoughtful essays underscore just how good a wordsmith Chabon is-regardless of the form he chooses.”
-Jerry Eberle, Booklist

“Both lyrical and side-splittingly funny. . . . Readers seeking the intelligence of Updike; the gentle, brainy appeal of Sedaris; or the literary virtuosity of Nabokov will thoroughly enjoy.”
-Douglas C. Lord, Library Journal

“Hilarious, moving, pleasurable, disturbing, transcendent, restless. . . . And seemingly by accident, Chabon ultimately does create a composite image of ideal manhood, one that is modest, responsible, bemused, empathic, and thoughtful.”
-Jeremy Adam Smith, San Francisco Chronicle

“Wry and heartfelt, Chabon’s riffs uncover brand-new insights in even the most quotidian subjects. . . . He applies an unusual level of wit and candor to the form.”
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)