"Take the Cannoli" is a moving and wickedly funny collection of personal stories stretching across the immense landscape of the American scene. Hailed by "Newsweek" as a "cranky stylist with talent to burn," Vowell has an irresistible voice -- caustic and sympathetic, insightful and double-edged -- that has attracted a loyal following for her magazine writing and radio monologues on This American Life.  While tackling subjects such as identity, politics, religion, art, and history, these autobiographical tales are written with a biting humor, placing Vowell solidly in the tradition of Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker. Vowell searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears.  "Take the Cannoli" is an eclectic tour of the New World, a collection of alternately hilarious and heartbreaking essays and autobiographical yarns.

Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World

Literature & Fiction

Sarah Vowell

History & Criticism

Hamish Hamilton Ltd/Penguin Group

Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and, in doing so, investigates the dusty, bumpy roads of her own life. In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell -- widely hailed for her inimitable stories on public radio's This American Life -- ponders a number of curious questions: Why is she happiest when visiting the sites of bloody struggles like Salem or Gettysburg? Why do people always inappropriately compare themselves to Rosa Parks? Why is a bad life in sunny California so much worse than a bad life anywhere else? What is it about the Zen of foul shots? And, in the title piece, why must doubt and internal arguments haunt the sleepless nights of the true patriot?  Her essays confront a wide range of subjects, themes, icons, and historical moments: Ike, Teddy Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton; Canadian Mounties and German filmmakers; Tom Cruise and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; twins and nerds; the Gettysburg Address, the State of the Union, and George W. Bush's inauguration.  The result is a teeming and engrossing book, capturing Vowell's memorable wit and her keen social commentary.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Reference

Simon&Schuster

The author of Take the Cannoli and contributing editor for public radio's "This American Life" shares her perspective on such topics as the 2000 election, present-day civil rights activists, and the relationship between the United States and Canada. 35,000 first printing.

Essays & Correspondence

A New York Times Bestseller
 Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, she visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood. The resulting narrative is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture.

Assassination Vacation

History

Americas

Thorndike Press

Family Ties: A Contemporary Perspective

If family is often considered the backbone of civilization, it has undergone serious rethinking over the past few decades. Most disciplines, from sociology to psychotherapy to economics, have had their turn at analyzing, theorizing and representing the family in all its many forms. In Family Ties, the relationships that bind families are explored via nearly 60 contemporary artists. Alice Neel paints mother daughter portraits; Nicholas Nixon photographs his wife and her three sisters every year for 25 years; Larry Fink documents the blue-collar Sabatines; Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin, who grew up, respectively, in middle-class black Christian and white Jewish families, run parallel slide shows of their childhood Kodak moments; and Roger Shimomura renders pop images from the Japanese internment camps where his family spent part of his childhood. Published in conjunction with Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts and an exhibition opening there in June 2003. (Jun 21 - Sep 21.03)

Trevor J. Fairbrother

Distributed Art Pub Inc (Dap)

Unfamiliar Fishes

RECORDED BOOKS^

Take the cannoli. Cronache dall'America vera

Minimum Fax

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Books by Sarah Vowell