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The way the world works : essays / Nicholson Baker.

By: Baker, Nicholson.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: London : Simon & Schuster, 2012Description: x, 317 pages ; 22 cm.ISBN: 9781471102660.Subject(s): American essaysDDC classification: 814.54
Contents:
Life -- Reading -- Libraries and newspapers -- Technology -- War -- Last essay.
Summary: "Baker's second nonfiction collection, ranges over the map of life to examine what troubles us, what eases our pain, and what brings us joy. Baker moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the "OED," and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola. He writes about kite string and about the moment he met his wife, and he surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at "Modern Warfare 2." In a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, Baker describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism; in another, he charts the rise of e-readers; in a third he chronicles his Freedom of Information lawsuit against the San Francisco Public Library."
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending 814.54 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00196536
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Way the World Works, Nicholson Baker's ranges over the map of life to examine what ails us, what eases our pain, and what gives us joy. Baker-recently hailed as "one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time" by The New York Times-moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the OED, and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola. In one essay, Baker surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at Modern Warfare 2; in a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, he describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism. Through all these pieces Baker shines the light of an inexpugnable curiosity; The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master.

Includes bibliographical references.

Life -- Reading -- Libraries and newspapers -- Technology -- War -- Last essay.

"Baker's second nonfiction collection, ranges over the map of life to examine what troubles us, what eases our pain, and what brings us joy. Baker moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the "OED," and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola. He writes about kite string and about the moment he met his wife, and he surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at "Modern Warfare 2." In a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, Baker describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism; in another, he charts the rise of e-readers; in a third he chronicles his Freedom of Information lawsuit against the San Francisco Public Library."

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Way the World Works FOREWORD Back in 1982, when I was just getting going as a writer, William Whitworth, the editor of The Atlantic, called to say that he was putting together a 125th-anniversary edition and he wondered if I had anything short to contribute to the front of the magazine. Flattered, I wrote something that tootled around in a ruminative way called "Changes of Mind." Other pieces followed, and I allowed myself to believe that I was helping to bring back the personal essay, which had fallen out of fashion. Some of my heroes were G. K. Chesterton, Christopher Morley, Alice Meynell, William Hazlitt, William James, and Samuel Johnson. By 1996 I had enough for a collection, The Size of Thoughts. Now it's 2012 and time, it seems, for a second and slightly heftier accrual. The first section of the book, LIFE, is made up of autobiographical bits arranged more or less chronologically; then come some meditations on READING and being read to. After that I tell the story of how I sued a public LIBRARY and talk about the beauties and wonders of old NEWSPAPERS; and then comes some TECHNO-journalism and writings on WAR and the people who oppose it, followed by a LAST ESSAY that I wrote for The American Scholar on mowing the lawn. I like mowing the lawn, and it didn't seem quite right to end the book with an impressionistic article on my unsuccessful efforts to master a series of violent video games. You'll find things in here about kite string, e-readers, earplugs, telephones, coins in fountains, paper mills, Wikipedia, commonplace books, airplane wings, gondolas, the OED, Call of Duty, Dorothy Day, John Updike, David Remnick, and Daniel Ellsberg. In a number of places I've changed a title, or restored a sentence or a passage that was cut to make something fit. I hope you run into a few items that interest you. My thanks go to Jofie Ferrari-Adler at Simon & Schuster, and to all the careful, kind editors I've worked with on these pieces, especially Deborah Garrison, Henry Finder, Alice Quinn, and Cressida Leyshon at The New Yorker, Anne Fadiman and Sandra Costich at The American Scholar, Robert Silvers and Sasha Weiss at The New York Review of Books, Jennifer Scheussler and Laura Marmor at the New York Times, and James Marcus at Harper's. Excerpted from The Way the World Works by Nicholson Baker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Nicholson Baker lives in Maine.

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