Alec Wilkinson

Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age

Divine Language

S.A. Andrée and the heroic age of arctic exploration

The ice balloon

Padgett Powell

For thirty-five years, Garland Bunting slid his “sweet potato shape—small at both ends and big in the middle” onto the front seat of his beat-up pickup with the coon dogs in the back to ride around in pursuit of moonshine stills in Halifax County, North Carolina. Bunting was true a one-of-a-kind, a man who would do nearly anything to get his culprit. To best the bootleggers, Bunting passed himself off as an outrageous array of characters, including a door-to-door fish peddler, a preacher, a farmer, a fox hunter, a sawmill worker, and a woman.

Articulate, canny, imaginative, and aware—aware even that he’s an unusual character—Bunting fills the foreground of Alec Wilkinson’s deeply reported and elegantly told story. This is experiential, immersive, journalism at its best.

Moonshine is a wonderfully alive portrait of both Bunting and rural North Carolina’s coastal plain, with its landscape of small farms, woods, and swamps. We meet the people Bunting grew up with, his fellow liquor agents, his cronies, and his shy wife, Colleen. Along the way, we learn the history of moonshine and how it is made, and accompany Bunting on the stake-out of a small, backwoods still.

For viewers who made Moonshiners a hit for 12 seasons on the Discovery Channel, this is the book they’ve been waiting for. All readers will find a story where the flavors of the past and present are richly intermingled.

This Nonpareil edition includes a new introduction by acclaimed author Padgett Powell.

A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor

Moonshine

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 person, to be truly happy, must define his or her three deepest desires and pursue them remorselessly. Inspired by Thor Heyerdahl, Neutrino is the only man ever to build a raft from garbage he found on the streets of New York and sail it across the North Atlantic. Meanwhile, he invented an unstoppable football play, which one coach describes as being as innovative as the forward pass.--From publisher description.

an account of the life of Poppa Neutrino

The happiest man in the world

When I was twenty-three years old, five months out of college, with a degree in music, and without any idea of what to do with myself, I took a job as a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and resolved to stay with it for a year because I thought it would do me good. I was lonely much of the time, as well as scared, surprised, excited, embarrassed, self-righteous, and many other things, too. I spent hours at a stretch hoping nothing serious would happen when I was working alone; I never quite shook the feeling that I was a fraud; and on several occasions, when it all seemed to be too much, I meant to quit, but I never did. -Alec Wilkinson About the Author Alec Wilkinson has been a staff writer at the "New Yorker" for many years, and also contributes to such magazines as "DoubleTake, Esquire," and "Rolling Stone," He is the author of five books, including "Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor," "His reporter's eye for detail is omnivorous...ear for voices is fine and precise and his perceptions of and compassion for his fellow officers are profound. Never patronizing, never amused at their expense; he portrays them as they are: underpaid, underappreciated rural Americans struggling to make it from day to day."-"New York Times Book Review" ""Midnights" portrays the voices and routines of believable men... he conveys his experiences with wisdom and sophistication."-"Chicago Tribune"

Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police

Documents the dramatic 1897 flight of a visionary Swedish explorer who attempted to discover the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon, placing his story against a backdrop of period exploration and scientific discovery while describing the formidable environmental conditions that challenged his efforts.

S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration

The Ice Balloon

A wonderfully alive portrait of an American original who is the most successful revenue agent in the history of a state that has always been enormously productive of moonshine, also serving as a memorable account of life in backwoods Halifax County, North Carolina.

Presents a portrait of the folk singer, tracing his career and influence as a singer and surveying his political development.

An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger

The Protest Singer

The story of Mike Wayne Jackson, a man who killed his probation officer and continued on a killing spree that took him from Indianapolis to Missouri, looks into the heart of American violence and its consequences. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo. Tour.

A Violent Act

Critically acclaimed New Yorker contributor Wilkinson spent several years following the erratic trail of vagabond Poppa Neutrino--street musician, beatnik, raft man--for this disturbing and profound look at one man's life outside the boundaries of what most consider normality.

An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino

The Happiest Man in the World

Alec Wilkinson has spent the last few years of his life following the erratic trail and exploits of Poppa Neutrino and his band of followers (including three wives), partly because the story is so strange and partly because Wilkinson knew that in some ways we can all identify with this odd man out.

Blending together biography, memoir, and essay, the author details his twenty-five year relationship with the legendary writer and New Yorker fiction editor, brilliantly examining the powerful bond between mentor and mentee. Reprint.

A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell

My Mentor

The story of Mike Wayne Jackson, who killed his probation officer and continued on a killing spree that took him from Indianapolis to Missouri, looks into the heart of American violence and its consequences

"There is almost no writer I admire as much as I do Alec Wilkinson. He’s an extraordinary reporter and a writer of such grace that his stories seem illuminated from within. His work has enduring brilliance and humanity.” —Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book A spirited, metaphysical exploration into math's deepest mysteries and conundrums at the crux of middle age. Decades after struggling to understand math as a boy, Alec Wilkinson decides to embark on a journey to learn it as a middle-aged man. What begins as a personal challenge—and it's challenging—soon transforms into something greater than a belabored effort to learn math. Despite his incompetence, Wilkinson encounters a universe of unexpected mysteries in his pursuit of mathematical knowledge and quickly becomes fascinated; soon, his exercise in personal growth (and torture) morphs into an intellectually expansive exploration. In A Divine Language, Wilkinson, a contributor to The New Yorker for over forty years, journeys into the heart of the divine aspect of mathematics—its mysteries, challenges, and revelations—since antiquity. As he submits himself to the lure of deep mathematics, he takes the reader through his investigations into the subject’s big questions—number theory and the creation of numbers, the debate over math’s human or otherworldly origins, problems and equations that remain unsolved after centuries, the conundrum of prime numbers. Writing with warm humor and sharp observation as he traverses practical math’s endless frustrations and rewards, Wilkinson provides an awe-inspiring account of an adventure from a land of strange sights. Part memoir, part metaphysical travel book, and part journey in self-improvement, A Divine Language is one man’s second attempt at understanding the numbers in front of him, and the world beyond.

A Divine Language

Mavis Gallant

Malcolm Gladwell

Toni Bentley

Nicholas Schmidle

Rachel Aviv

Oito grandes reportagens sobre crimes da melhor revista jornalística do mundo Fundada pelos jornalistas Harold Ross e Jane Grant em 1925, a New Yorker é uma instituição norte-americana. Desde a sua fundação, a New Yorker se destacou pelo espaço que dava para os novos talentos literários, a sensibilidade fina com que analisava as notícias contemporâneas, e o rigoroso processo de checagem de dados, que até hoje é reconhecido como um dos melhores da imprensa mundial. John Hersey, Hannah Arendt, Dorothy Parker, Philip Roth, J.D. Salinger, John Updike, John Cheever e Jonathan Safran Foer são alguns dos nomes da longa lista de autores consagrados que contribuíram com contos, ensaios críticos, ou reportagens. Um trabalho, porém, é crucial para entender a gênese do livro Os piores crimes da revista New Yorker. Em 1965, quando Truman Capote iniciou a série de artigos na revista que viriam a se tornar o livro "A Sangue Frio", deu-se início a um novo gênero literário; o chamado "crime real", que nas décadas seguintes se consolidaria como um dos mais populares gêneros literários da nossa era. O livro Os piores crimes da revista New Yorker é uma seleção dos melhores artigos publicados nas últimas décadas, tratando de crimes reais, suas consequências, e o que eles podem jogar de luz sobre nossos sistemas legais, nossa sociedade, e nossa humanidade.

Os piores crimes da revista New Yorker

Poppa Neutrino is a philosopher of movement, a vernacular Buddhist, a San Francisco bohemian, a polymath, a pauper, a football strategist for the Red Mesa Redskins of the Navajo Nation, and a mariner who built a raft from materials he found on the streets of New York and sailed across the North Atlantic. And he is possibly the happiest man in the world. This is a rare and compelling book in which nearly every page contains an implausible, outrageous and exhilarating adventure.

Det sena 1800-talets upptäckariver drev över tusen polarforskare till det ogästvänliga landskapet. En av dem var den visionäre svenske upptäcktsresanden S.A. Andrée som år 1897 gjorde ett uppmärksammat försök att tillsammans med två kollegor flyga till nordpolen i vätgasballongen Örnen. Sedan blev det tyst. Spekulationerna om vad som hänt forskarna var många. 33 år senare påträffades deras kroppar och dagböcker på isen. När kvarlevorna fördes till Sverige möttes de av ett sällan skådat folkuppbåd och en landssorgsliknande stämning. Alec Wilkinson, medarbetare i New Yorker, skildrar en fascinerande epok med äventyrare och upptäcktsresanden som under outsägliga umbäranden utforskade denna nya kontinent och vars slutpunkt var Andrée-expeditionen. Med deltagarnas egna anteckningar, fotografier och samtida källor berättar han historien den ödesdigra polarfärden.

Polarexpeditionen : Andrée och jakten på Nordpolen

A collection of essays, originally published in "The New Yorker," "Esquire," and other periodicals, includes the title piece about a New York artist who invites people to call and leave an apology on his answering machine.

Mr. Apology and Other Essays

The story of the only person to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon, and the golden age of Polar Exploration.

Alec Wilkinson

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