From a New York Times–bestselling and National Book Critics Award–winning author comes a "small masterpiece" of fatherhood, childhood, and bottle-feeding ( Publishers Weekly).In a novel Entertainment Weekly called "intensely funny and moving," Nicholson Baker takes the reader on an intellectual odyssey over the course of the twenty minutes it takes a new father to give his baby daughter her bottle. Through inspired moments of mental fligh...

A National Book Critics Circle Award–winner elevates the ordinary events that occur to a man on his lunch hour into "a constant delight" of a novel ( The Boston Globe).In this startling, witty, and inexhaustibly inventive novel, New York Times–bestselling author Nicholson Baker uses a one-story escalator ride as the occasion for a dazzling reappraisal of everyday objects and rituals. From the humble milk carton to the act of tying one's shoes,

“A seriously funny book.”—Salman Rushdie“It pulverized me.”—Hernan DiazAn elegant, refreshed edition of Nicholson Baker’s stunning and highly influential first novel, a witty and boundlessly inventive homage to the profound, neglected details of everyday working lifeThe Mezzanine is a novel told through one man’s ride up an escalator in the office building where he works. In the hands of Nicholson Baker, th...

Having turned phone sex into the subject of an astonishing national bestseller in Vox, Baker now outdoes himself with an outrageously arousing, acrobatically stylish "X-rated sci-fi fantasy that leaves Vox seeming more like mere fiber-optic foreplay" (Seattle Times). "Sparkling."--San Francisco Chronicle.

Bestselling author Nicholson Baker, recognized as one of the most dexterous and talented writers in America today, has created a compelling work of nonfiction bound to provoke discussion and controversy -- a wide-ranging, astonishingly fresh perspective on the political and social landscape that gave rise to World War II.Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating ...

In the New York Times bestseller House of Holes, Nicholson Baker, “one of the most beautiful, original, and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades” (The New York Times Magazine), returns to the terrain that made him famous with a gleefully provocative, off-the-charts erotic novel that is unlike anything you’ve read—“a filthy tour de force” (Time).Shandee finds a friendly arm at a granite quarry. Ned drops down a h...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERVox is a novel that remaps the territory of sex—sex solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous. It is an erotic classic that places Nicholson Baker firmly in the first rank of major American writers.

Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks.What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no further than Emmett’s hearth and home. Nicholson Baker’s extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never...

The ostensible purpose of a library is to preserve the printed word. But for fifty years our country’s libraries–including the Library of Congress–have been doing just the opposite, destroying hundreds of thousands of historic newspapers and replacing them with microfilm copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age.With meticulous detective work and Baker’s well-known explanatory power, D...

Thane Baker grew up in the Kansas Dust Bowl. An Olympic medal winner from his small town gave seven-year-old Thane hopes for his own Olympic glory. Yet a work injury at age fourteen shoved steel behind his kneecap and ended his dreams. When new on his college campus, a coach allowed Thane to walk onto the track team. Three years later, Thane earned an unexpected berth on the 1952 United States Olympic Track and Field Team and traveled to New York City, Helsinki, Finland, and other European...

Paul Chowder is trying to write the introduction to a new anthology of rhyming verse, but he’s having a hard time getting started. The result of his fitful struggles is The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker’s brilliantly funny and exquisite love story about poetry.* * *A New York Times Notable Book, 2009Favorite Fiction of 2009–Los Angeles TimesBest Books of 2009–The Christian Science MonitorBest of 2009–Slate.com

**A New York Times Bestseller**“May be the most revealing depiction of the American contemporary classroom that we have to date." —Garret Keizer, The New York Times Book ReviewBestselling author Nicholson Baker, in pursuit of the realities of American public education, signed up as a substitute teacher in a Maine public school district.In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprint...