From Publishers Weekly
In this sardonic collection of essays, Rakoff (Don't Get Too Comfortable) plays the role of a naysayer who tries to convince the reader, with humorous asides and sarcastic one-liners, that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket and the nerds and geeks will someday be the globe's financial and political tyrants. His topics are a hodge-podge lot that covers hopes and dreams, the meaning of a Jew who eats pork, optimism, a stunted childhood, and the New York City Exotic Erotic Ball and Expo. While his wise-cracking humor isn't always on target, he shines when discussing the acceptance of grief and mortality in "All The Time We Have," and "the bohemian myth" of artists and Rent creator Jonathan Larson's demise the day before his popular show opened, in "Isn't It Romantic?"
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From
In this, his third, compilation of essays, Rakoff invites into the ring Positivity, that plucky, perennial champ, and takes down the old grinner one forlorn blow at a time. Maintaining his signature and singular charm (Fraud, 2001; Donβt Get Too Comfortable, 2005), Rakoff analyzes the heck out of common- ( and not-so-common-) place culture: the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Salt Lake City, a New York porn convention, to name names. Rakoff is so keenly observant and dead-on with his criticism, you get the impression most of our eyes would cross and cartoon birds fly above our heads before we could make it halfway to the elegant, smart conclusions he draws. Calling into question some of the institutions we hold closest to our hearts, and peppered with guilty, nose-crinkling laughs, this is a verbose, grandiose stockpile of sour grapesβa writerly collection to make giddy even the most erudite lover of words. An undisputed KO for negative thinking. --Annie Bostrom