The Way the World Works

New York Times bestselling author Nicholson Baker, “who writes like no one else in America” (Newsweek), has assembled his best nonfiction writing over the last fifteen years, a trove of original and provocative pieces.

The Way the World Works, Nicholson Baker’s second essay collection, 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 Book Review—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 the book’s title 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 (for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications), 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.