Alec Wilkinson

In this grand and astonishing tale, Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration,” Andrée’s expedition was followed by nearly the entire world,...

David Pearlman, 74, is a restless and migratory soul, a mariner, a musician, a member of the Explorers Club and a friend of the San Francisco Beats, a former preacher and sign painter, a polymath, a pauper, and a football strategist for the Red Mesa Redskins of the Navajo Nation. When he recovered from a near-fatal illness at 50, he felt so different that he decided he needed a new name, and began calling himself Poppa Neutrino. He believes that each...

Mr Apology and Other Essays is a miscellany of misfits, cranks, daredevils, nuts, eccentrics, and lone wolves. From a piece on a Romanian cab driver who intends to cross the Bering Strait in his taxi to a celebration of two renowned hockey fighters, from Ry Cooder's collaboration with Cuban musicians in 1996 (which resulted in the acclaimed Buena Vista Social Club) to a behind-the-scenes look at a Rolling Stones dinner party in 1983, Wilkinson brings...

"An illuminating celebration of an author widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's great unsung heroes of American literature As a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975, William Maxwell helped shaped several generations' sense of the literary short story. At the same time, Maxwell himself was also an exceptional novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. Given unique, unfettered access to Maxwell's...