The bestselling author of The Orchid Thief is back with this delightfully entertaining collection of her best and brightest profiles. Acclaimed New Yorker writer Susan Orlean brings her wry sensibility, exuberant voice, and peculiar curiosities to a fascinating range of subjects--from the well known (Bill Blass) to the unknown (a typical ten-year-old boy) to the formerly known (the 1960s girl group the Shaggs).
Passionate people. Famous people. Short people. And one championship show dog named Biff, who from a certain angle looks a lot like Bill Clinton. Orlean transports us into the...

This Side of Paradise is the book that established F. Scott Fitzgerald as the prophet and golden boy of the newly dawned Jazz Age. Published in 1920, when he was just twenty-three, the novel catapulted him to instant fame and financial success. The story of Amory Blaine, a privileged, aimless, and self-absorbed Princeton student, This Side of Paradise closely reflects Fitzgerald's own experiences as an undergraduate. Amory Blaine's journey from prep school to college to the First World War is an account of -the lost generation.- The young -romantic egotist- symbolizes what...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean's wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower--the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii--a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America's strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida's swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In...

Now in its 20th year, this "consistently refined and lively series" (Booklist) still highlights "the best that the form can be" (Philadelphia Inquirer). This year's collection highlights lively and provocative writing from Roger Angell, Andrea Barrett, David Sedaris, Holly Welker, and others.

Bestselling author and "New Yorker" staff writer Susan Orlean edits this years volume of the finest travel writing from the past year. Contributors include Ian Frazier, Ann Patchett, David Halberstam, Peter Hessler, and others.

Susan Orlean has been called "a national treasure" by The Washington Post and "a kind of latter-day Tocqueville" by The New York Times Book Review. In addition to having written classic articles for The New Yorker, she was played, with some creative liberties, by Meryl Streep in her Golden Globe Award--winning performance in the film Adaptation.
Now, in My Kind of Place, the real Susan Orlean takes readers on a series of remarkable journeys in this uniquely witty, sophisticated, and far-flung travel book. In this irresistible collection of adventures far...

Cooper Gillespie, an extremely intelligent and handsome Welsh springer spaniel, is a dog of discriminating taste and strong opinions. Now Cooper, with the assistance of cookbook author Sally Sampson and the transcription services of his favorite human, Susan Orlean, has put together 50 delectable recipes for snacks, meals, and treats for your canine companion.
Maybe you're cooking everything because your collie has colitis or your Akita has a wheat allergy or your older dog just isn't thriving on commercial kibble. Maybe you're mixing up the occasional biscuit or treat to help your best...

From Susan Orlean, the bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin, comes a new edition of her first book, a quirky classic of narrative journalism that offers an irresistible portrait of how Saturday night in America is lived--with a new Afterword by the author.

Twenty years ago, before she wrote The Orchid Thief or was hailed as "a national treasure" by The Washington Post, Susan Orlean was a journalist with a question: What makes Saturday night so special? To answer it, she embarked on a remarkable journey across the country and spent the...

One of the most acclaimed nonfiction books of 2011, Susan Orlean's New York Times bestseller Rin Tin Tin is "an unforgettable book about the mutual devotion between one man and one dog" (The Wall Street Journal).

He believed the dog was immortal. So begins Susan Orlean's sweeping, powerfully moving account of Rin Tin Tin's journey from abandoned puppy to movie star and international icon. Spanning almost one hundred years of history, from the dog's improbable discovery on a battlefield in 1918 to his tumultuous rise through Hollywood and...