With the same quirky brilliance that drew fans to his previous work, Ian Frazier narrates the history of his family from early colonial days to the present. He reconstructs two hundred years of middle-class life, visiting small towns his ancestors lived in, reading the books they read, discovering the larger forces of history that affected them. He observes family members during the Revolutionary War; he follows others west as they pioneer in the wilderness of Ohio and Indiana, where schoolteachers were paid in whiskey and door hinges were made of bacon ride. He visits the battlefields where they fought the Civil War. He interviews old-timers, uncles, aunts, cousins, maids, a beer-store owner who knew his dad. Family is a poetic epic of facts, a chronicle of a culture's rise and fall, a memorial, a view of American history as romantic as it is unflinching.

Family

Frazier, Ian

Parenting & Relationships

Harper-perennial

Selected and introduced by the incomparable Ian Frazier, Humor Me delivers a bumper crop of hilarity from the funniest writers at work today, with proceeds from its sales going to 826 National—the Dave Eggers-founded nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations across the country. Featuring laugh-out-loud comic contributions from a host of American funnymen and women—including Steve Martin, Garrison Keillor, Veronica Geng, and David Sedaris—Humor Me is fun for all, a treasure trove of rare wit that every Jon Stewart fan and reader of The Onion will appreciate.

Humor Me: An Anthology of Funny Contemporary Writing (Plus Some Great Old Stuff Too)

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Ecco

The perfect book for anyone with a sense of humor: more than fifty of the greatest pieces of comic writing of our time, selected by the incomparable Ian Frazier.

These twenty-four stories range from parody to absurd humor, from farce to outlandish personal fantasy

Dating Your Mom

Penguin

The author profiles the storied Great Plains of the American Midwest, relating the history, the lore, and the stories of the current inhabitants of the area

Great Plains

Travel

United States

Penguin??Books

National Bestseller
With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

History

Americas

Picador

On the Rez

On the Rez is a sharp, unflinching account of the modern-day American Indian experience, especially that of the Oglala Sioux, who now live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the plains and badlands of the American West. Crazy Horse, perhaps the greatest Indian war leader of the 1800s, and Black Elk, the holy man whose teachings achieved worldwide renown, were Oglala; in these typically perceptive pages, Frazier seeks out their descendants on Pine Ridge―a/k/a "the rez"―which is one of the poorest places in America today. 
Along with his longtime friend Le War Lance (whom he first wrote about in his 1989 bestseller, Great Plains) and other Oglala companions, Frazier fully explores the rez as they visit friends and relatives, go to pow-wows and rodeos and package stores, and tinker with a variety of falling-apart cars. He takes us inside the world of the Sioux as few writers ever have, writing with much wit, compassion, and imagination. In the career of SuAnne Big Crow, for example, the most admired Oglala basketball player of all time, who died in a car accident in 1992, Frazier finds a contemporary reemergence of the death-defying, public-spirited Sioux hero who fights with grace and glory to save her followers. 
On the Rez vividly portrays the survival, through toughness and humor, of a great people whose culture has helped to shape the American identity.

The title essay of Coyote v. Acme, Ian Frazier's second collection of humorous essays, imagines the opening statement of an attorney representing cartoon character Wile E. Coyote in a product liability suit against the Acme Company, supplier of unpredictable rocket sleds and faulty spring-powered shoes. Other essays are about Bob Hope's golfing career, a commencement address given by a Satanist college president, a suburban short story attacked by the Germans, the problem of issues versus non-issues, and the theories of revolutionary stand-up comedy from Comrade Stalin. From first to last, this is Frazier at his hilarious best.

Coyote V. Acme

With wit and an unerring eye for detail, acclaimed author Ian Frazier takes readers on a journey through his family's story, his nation's history, and himself
Using letters and other family documents, Frazier reconstructs two hundred years of middle-class life, visiting small towns his ancestors lived in, reading books they read, and discovering the larger forces of history that affected them. He observes some of them during the British raid on Danbury, Connecticut, in the Revolutionary War; he follows others west as they pioneer in the wilderness of Ohio and Indiana; he visits the battlefields where they fought the Civil War. Frazier interviews old-timers, uncles, aunts, cousins, maids, and a beer-store owner who knew his dad. He pursues the family saga in aspect from trivial to grand, hoping for "a meaning that would defeat death." 
Family is a poetic epic of facts, a chronicle of Protestant culture's rise and fall, a memorial, and a revised view of American history as romantic as it is cold-eyed.
 “Mr. Frazier, in this remarkable history of an unremarkable family, plays both roles, the gossip and the pedant, balances skillfully, then adds his own insights as a loyal family member.” ―David Willis McCullough, The New York Times Book Review

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

From the opening essay, "The Bloomsbury Group Live at the Apollo (Liner Notes from the New Best-Selling Album)" to the title piece that discusses ways in which you might begin a romance with your mother ("In today's fast-moving, transient, rootless society, where people meet and make love and part without ever really touching, the relationship every guy already has with his own mother is too valuable to ignore...") to a parody that features Samuel Beckett as a pilot giving an existential in-flight speech to the passengers, the twenty-five comic essays in this delightful collection are nothing short of brilliant. Ian Frazier, long considered one of our most treasured humorists, proves that comedy can be just as smart as it is entertaining.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frazier, Ian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Frazier, Ian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frazier, Ian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Family

Humor Me: An Anthology of Funny Contemporary Writing (Plus Some Great Old Stuff Too)

Humor Me: An Anthology of Funny Contemporary Writing (Plus Some Great Old Stuff Too)

Dating Your Mom

Great Plains

Great Plains

On the Rez

Coyote V. Acme

Family

Dating Your Mom