"A gold mine of ideas . . . to help us wage personal and quiet vengeance against those who annoy us." --South Florida Sun-Sentinel

For some of us, it's the automated voice that answers the phone when we'd rather talk to a real person. For others, it's the fact that Starbucks insists on calling its smallest-sized coffee "tall." Each of us finds some aspect of everyday life to be particularly maddening, and we often long to lash out at these stubborn irritants of modern life.

In Life's Little Annoyances, Ian Urbina chronicles the lengths to which some people...