# Serious Face: Essays - Hardcover

by **Jon Mooallem** (Author)

**From the discovery of the author's face in a century-old photograph to a triple-amputee hospice director working at the border of life and death, here are thirteen hopeful, heartbreaking, and profound essays from "one of the most intelligent, compassionate, and curious authors working today" (Elizabeth Gilbert).**

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: _Kirkus Reviews_  
  
Beneath the self-assured and serious faces we wear, every human life is full of longing, guesswork, and confusion--a scramble to do the best we can and make everything up as we go along. In these wide-ranging essays, Jon Mooallem chronicles the beauty of our blundering and the inescapability of our imperfections. He investigates the collapse of a multimillion-dollar bird-breeding scam run by an aging farmer known as the Pigeon King, intimately narrates a harrowing escape from California's deadliest wildfire, visits an eccentric Frenchman building a town at what he claims is the center of the world, shadows a man through his first day of freedom after twenty-one years in prison, and more--all with a deep conviction that it's our vulnerability, not our victories, that connect us.

Mooallem's powers of perception have established him as one of the most distinctive, empathic, and clear-sighted narrative journalists working today. _The Wall Street Journal_ has called his writing "as much art as it is journalism," and Jia Tolentino has praised his "grace and command." In _Serious Face,_ Mooallem brings to life the desperate hopes and urgent fears of the people he meets, telling their stories with empathy, humor, insight, and kindness. These elegant, moving essays form an idiosyncratic tapestry of human experience: our audacity and fallibility, our bumbling and goodwill. In moments of calamity and within the extreme absurdity of everyday life, can we learn to love the people we really are, behind the serious faces we show the world?

### Author Biography

**Jon Mooallem** is a longtime writer at large for _The New York Times Magazine_ and a contributor to numerous radio shows and other magazines, including _This American Life_ and _Wired_. He is the author of _This Is Chance!,_ which was chosen as a best book of the year by BuzzFeed, and _Wild Ones_, which was chosen as a notable book of the year by _The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker,_ and Canada's _National Post,_ among others. He lives on Bainbridge Island, outside Seattle, with his family.

**Number of Pages:** 320

**Dimensions:** 1.1 x 8.3 x 5.4 IN

**Publication Date:** May 17, 2022

## Details

- **Price:** 28.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 28.00 USD | In stock |

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- Serious Face: Essays - Hardcover

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