In this essay collection, now with a new introduction by Ann Patchett, Geoffrey Wolff recounts the moral (and sometimes immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father. He shows us his wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmases presided over by his con-man father then shifts to his brash, short-lived teaching career in Istanbul. With dazzling literary agility, Wolff guides us through the surprising, invaluable turns that shaped his path: his victory over the chaos of drink, his open-heart surgery, his life-affirming surrender to the slopes of the Matterhorn, and his transcendent...