A spoof on our culture featuring a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation house near Boston. The center becomes a hotbed of revolutionary activity by Quebec separatists in revolt against the Organization of North American Nations which now rules the continent.

In the title story a Los Angeles Young Republican relates, with strangely hilarious affectlessness, his night out at a Keith Jarrett concert with is terminmally nihilistic punk friends Gimlet, Cheese, and Big, In "My Appearance" a very famous actresss frets and schemes how to avoid being made the butt of a late-night talk-show host's notoriously slippery jokes, while :Little Expressionless Animals" gives us a three-year streak on a game show, finally...

For this collection, Wallace immerses himself in the three-ring circus that is the presidential race in order to document one of the most vicious campaigns in recent history. Later he strolls from booth to booth at a lobster festival in Maine and risks life and limb to get to the bottom of the lobster question. Then he wheedles his way into an L.A. radio studio, armed with tubs of chicken, to get the behind-the-scenes view of a conservative talk show...

"Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as...

"Edward Drinker Cope was a Philadelphia Quaker from a wealthy family, an old-fashioned naturalist in the Jeffersonian tradition. Othniel Charles Marsh, a farm boy who had risen to a Yale professorship, was the model of a modern scientific entrepreneur. Opposites in personality and background as well as in political orientation and scientific beliefs, they fought over fossils as bitterly as other men fought over gold. With Indian wars swirling around...

Twenty-two stories tell of a frightened boy frozen on a diving board, a depressed woman trying to find help, and a group of men who try to rationalize their relationships with women.

One man's journey by foot, jeep, rowboat and camel through the greatest stories ever told: The five books of Moses. From crossing the Red Sea to climbing Mount Sinai, this will change the view of history's most legendary events.

After being dumped by her boyfriend, a graduate student sets out to interview a series of men to discover the truth behind their behavior.

Bound together by a desire to play "Mazes and Monsters" Robbie (Hanks) and his college classmates decide to move the board game into the local legendary cavern. Robbie starts having visions for real, and the line between fantasy and reality fuses into a harrowing adventure.