**“One of the 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years”—SlateOn New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day—chosen completely at random—turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing.**That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turne...

Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.What happens when one of the world's most renowned musicians appears incognito outside of a Washington, D.C. metro station to play some of the most beautiful music ever composed?In the audacious social experiment, "Pearls Before Breakfast", Gene Weingarten seeks out the answer to this question as he chronicles how an audience of rush hour pedestrians pass indifferently by as international wunderkind Joshua B...

GENE WEINGARTEN IS THE O. HENRY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISMSimply the best storyteller around, Weingarten describes the world as you think it is before revealing how it actually is—in narratives that are by turns hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative, but always memorable.Millions of people know the title piece about violinist Joshua Bell, which originally began as a stunt: What would happen if you put a world-class musician outside a Washington, D.C., subway...

Is God male or female? Why do women, but not men, flush public toilets with their feet? Why are men, but not women, obsessed with parallel parking? Why do women, but not men, leave eleven-minute messages on answering machines? Why do men feel guilty about nothing, and women feel guilty about everything? Was Marilyn Monroe...fat?These philosophical quandaries, and more, are finally debated in I'm with Stupid, an uproariously funny dialogue between Gene Weing...

Featuring sixty black-and-white photographs of old dogs shot by Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer Michael S. Williamson and narrated by Washington Post staffer and columnist Gene Weingarten, this is a perfect collection for dog lovers that celebrates “man’s best friend.”Anyone who has ever loved an old dog will love Old Dogs. In this collection of profiles and photographs, Weingarten and Williamson document the unique appeal of man's best friend...

When every hiccup sounds like the call of doom, each stomach pang hints at incipient cancer, and a headache means it's time to firm up your last will and testament, The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. provides just the relief you need. Gene Weingarten has spent his whole life immersed in the eclectic details of bizarre symptoms, self-diagnosing every minor ache as a potentially deadly disease. Weingarten examines:The mind of a hypochondriac

This endearing friendship story about a boy and his dog from a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer gently explores a timeless question: who’s really in charge?Meet Sid. He’s an ordinary kid. He’s far from perfect. But to Murphy, Sid’s faithful dog, Sid is the whole world. Murphy thinks Sid is the absolute best—and that he’s in charge of everything.Sid loves Murphy right back, but he can’t help but wonder what Murphy would think if he realized the truth: Sid’s jus...

**“One of the 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years”—SlateOn New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day—chosen completely at random—turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing.**That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turne...

The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement—precision—in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to ...

“A time-jumping, head-tripping odyssey.” —The Millions“A bracing swim in the waters of science, technology and fiction.” —Washington Post“A thrilling journey of ideas.” —Boston GlobeFrom the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, here is a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on o...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"Narrator Suehyla El-Attar has a strong voice for this memoir of a woman's journey into the mostly male world of tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. She is energetic, funny, and swift while telling the story of Anna Wiener's acculturation from book publishing in Manhattan to the dot-com boom in San Francisco." — AudioFile MagazineA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a J...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE PAST TWO DECADESOne of the most acclaimed books of our time, this modern classic “has set a new standard for reporting on poverty” (Barbara Ehrenreich, The N...