"For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work....

At forty, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction—pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. Zuckerman, whose work was his life, is unable to write a line. Now his work is trekking from one doctor to another, but none can find a cause for the pain or assuage it. Zuckerman himself wonders if the pain could have been caused by his own books. And while

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"In You Can't Make This Stuff Up, William M. Scovell writes, "Somehow, we all get through it and land somewhere." These stories find the mischievous and clever protagonist and a cast of colorful characters entangled in the web of life's perplexing dilemmas, against the nostalgic backdrop of 20th and 21st century Americana. We all know this character. His fortune never changes as he meanders through grade school, his trials in college, trying to one-up...