McSweeney's Fall 2014 Books Catalog

Fa l l 2 0 14 C ata lo g

McSweeney’s is a publishing

company based in San

Francisco. As well as

operating a daily humor

website, we also publish

Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly

Concern, the Believer, and an

ever-growing selection of

books under various imprints.

Fa l l 2 0 14 C ata lo g

g e n r e

Fiction

p u b l i c at i o n d at e

September 2014

p r i c e

$24

pa g e s

330

i s b n

978-1-940450-26-1

t r i m s i z e

5.5" × 8"

r i g h t s

World

IN CASE OF E M E R GENCYCOuRtN EY MORENO

What do you do when you can’t function? After rookie EMT Piper Gallagher responds to a call outside a Los Angeles shopping mall for a man who can only tell her, “I can’t function,” the question begins to haunt her. How will Piper continue to function despite the horror she sees working in South Central, and despite her own fractured past? And how will the woman Piper loves continue to function as she experiences the aftershocks of her time spent serving in Iraq? Piper’s experiences as a rookie break her down and open her up as her genuine urge to help patients confronts the daily realities of life in the back of an ambu-lance and a hospital’s hallways. This vivid and visceral debut is a rich study in trauma—in its causes and effects, in its methods and disguises, in its power and its pull.

p RAI SE FOR in case of emer gency :

“Riveting... inspiring.” —K.M. Soehnlein, author of Robin and Ruby

“Moreno writes about physical and emotional damage with such

precision that the reader feels supine, strapped into her own ambu-

lance, careening from page to page. It’s a story about the greatest

emergency of all: the plight of being a human with a fragile heart,

beating amidst all these dangers.”

—Joshua Mohr, author of Some Things That Meant the World to Me

What do you do when you can’t function? After rookie EMT Piper Gallagher responds to a call outside a Los Angeles shopping mall for a man who can only tell her, “I can’t function,” the question begins to haunt her. How will Piper continue to function despite the horror she sees working in South Central, and despite her own fractured past? And how will the woman Piper loves continue to function as she experiences the aftershocks of her time spent serving in Iraq? Piper’s experiences as a rookie break her down and open her up as her genuine urge to help patients confronts the daily realities of life in the back of an ambulance and a hospital’s hallways. This vivid and visceral debut is a rich study in trauma—in its causes and effects, in its methods and disguises, in its power and its pull.

isbn: 978-1-940450-26-1 • 5.5" × 8" • xxx pages • hardcover • $24media contact: Gabrielle Gantz; [email protected]

bookseller / librarian contact: Sam Riley; [email protected]

AdvAnCE unCoRRECTEd PRoofPLEASE ConSuLT fInISHEd book bEfoRE quoTInG foR REvIEW

g e n r e

Fiction


November 2014

p r i c e

$24

pa g e s

330

i s b n

978-1-940450-27-8

t r i m s i z e

6" × 8.5"

r i g h t s

US (ex. PH)

All M Y puNY S ORROwSMIR I AM tOEwS

Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda’s life is enviable (she’s a world-renowned pianist, glamor-ous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi’s a mess (she’s divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close—raised in a Menno-nite household and sharing the hardship of Elf’s desire to end her life. After Elf’s latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart, how to keep her own heart from breaking, and what it means to love someone who wants to die.

All My Puny Sorrows is the latest novel from Miriam Toews, one of Canada’s most beloved authors—not only because her work is rich with deep human feeling and compassion but because her observations are knife-sharp and her books wickedly funny. And this is Toews at her finest: a story that is as much a comedy as it is a tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.

p RAI SE FOR tOEwS:

“Toews is an extraordinarily gifted writer.” —The Globe and Mail

“Witty and wise... with great style and a pitch-perfect ear.” —The Los Angeles Times

MIRIAM TOEWS

g e n r e

Fiction


October 2014

p r i c e

$40

pa g e s

600

i s b n

978-1-940450-01-8

t r i m s i z e

7.75" × 10"

r i g h t s

North America

StORIE S upON StORIESEditEd by AlESSANdRO BARICCO

Stories Upon Stories is an epic re-imagining of ten classic tales: Dave Eggers rewrites Jules Verne’s rollicking “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” Ali Smith reconceives Sophocles’ tragedy “Antigone,” Umberto Eco reimagines the mind-bending Italian classic “The Betrothed,” along with seven more equally inspired pairings of timeless master-pieces with contemporary literary masters. Featuring breath-takingly original illustrations on every page, and bound as lavishly as a textbook worthy of Hogwarts, this book will spark the imaginations of children and adults alike.

G I lGA M ESh by Yiyun Lit wEN t Y thOu SANd lEAGuES uNdER thE SEA by Dave EggersG ul lI vER ’S tRAvElS by Jonathan CoeCYR A N O dE BERGERAC by Stefano Benni t hE N O SE by Andrea Camilleri d ON JuAN by Alessandro Bariccot hE BEtROthEd by Umberto EcoA NtI G ON E by Ali SmithKI N G lEA R by Melania MazzuccoCRI M E A Nd puNIShMENt by Abraham B. Yehoshua

g e n r e

Nonfiction


November 2014

p r i c e

$25

pa g e s

164

i s b n

978-1-940450-28-5

t r i m s i z e

TK

r i g h t s

World

IN FORM At ION d OESN’ t wANttO BE FRE EthE dEfinitivE statEmEnt on art and copyright in

thE intErnEt agE, from onE of thE wEb’s most

cElEbratEd thinkErs

CORY d O CtOROw In sharply argued, fast-moving chapters, Cory Doctorow’s Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free takes on the state of copyright and creative success in the digital age. Can small artists still thrive in the internet era? Can giant record labels avoid alienating their audiences? This is a book about the pitfalls, and the opportunities, creative industries (and individuals) are confronting today—about how the old models have failed or found new footing, and about what might soon replace them. An essential read for anyone with a stake in the future of the arts, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free offers a vivid guide to the ways cre-ativity and the internet interact today, and to what might be coming next.

p RAI SE FOR CORY d O CtOROw ’S pREvIOu S wORK:

“Doctorow throws off cool ideas the way champagne generates

bubbles... [he] definitely has the goods.” —San Francisco Chronicle

g e n r e

Nonfiction


September 2014

p r i c e

$18

pa g e s

336

i s b n

978-1-940450-18-6

t r i m s i z e

5.5" × 8.5"

r i g h t s

World

REAd hA Rd E R EditEd by hEIdI Jul AvIt S ANd Ed pARK

This volume collects the finest essays from the second half of the Believer’s decade-long (and counting) run. The Believer, the McSweeney’s-published five-time nominee for the National Magazine Award, is beloved for tackling everything from pop culture to ancient literature with the same sagacity and wit, and this collection cements that reputation with pieces as wildly diverse as the magazine itself. Featured articles include Nick Hornby on his first job, Leslie Jamison on the world of ultramarathons, Fran-cisco Goldman on the failings of memoir in dealing with personal tragedy, Megan Abbott and Sara Gran on V.C. Andrews and the secret life of girls, and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah on Dave Chappelle. Read Harder collects some of the finest nonfiction writing published in America today, from the profound to the absurd, the crushing to the up-lifting. As the Believer enters its second decade, Read Harder serves as both an essential primer for one of the finest, strangest magazines in the country, and an indispensable stand-alone volume.

g e n r e

Nonfiction


November 2014

p r i c e

$16

pa g e s

320

i s b n

978-1-940450-24-7

t r i m s i z e

5.5" × 8.25"

r i g h t s

World

pAlEStINE SpE A KSvoicEs from thE wEst bank and gaza

EditEd by CAtE MAlEK & MAtEO hOKE

For more than six decades, Israel and Palestine have been the global focal point of intractable conflict, one that has led to one of the world’s most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises. In their own words, men and women from West Bank and Gaza describe how their lives have been shaped by the conflict. Here are stories that humanize the oft-ignored violations of human rights that occur daily in the occupied Palestinian territories.

p RAI SE FOR vOICE OF wItNESS:

“[Voice of Witness] books are amazing… beautifully produced, with incredible editing and literary sensibil-ity. Voice of Witness has done a better job than I’ve seen anybody do with having people tell their stories in a way that really engages you.” —Rachel Maddow, MSNBC

Voice of Witness

g e n r e

Humor


October 2014

p r i c e

$20

pa g e s

112

i s b n

978-1-938073-88-5

t r i m s i z e

5.5" × 8.25"

r i g h t s

World

A lOAd OF hO OEYB OB OdENKIRKthE first book in thE odEnkirk mEmorial library sEriEs

Bob Odenkirk is a legend in the comedy-writing world, winning Emmys and acclaim for his work on Saturday Night Live, Mr. Show with Bob and David, and many other seminal TV shows. This book, his first, is a spleen-bruis-ingly funny omnibus that ranges from absurdist mono-logues (“Martin Luther King, Jr’s Worst Speech Ever”) to intentionally bad theater (“Hitler Dinner Party: A Play”); from avant-garde fiction (“Obituary for the Creator of Madlibs”) to free-verse poetry that’s funnier and more powerful than the work of Calvin Trillin, Jewel, and Robert Louis Stevenson combined.

Odenkirk’s debut resembles nothing so much as a hilari-ous new sketch comedy show that’s exclusively available as a streaming video for your mind. As Odenkirk himself writes in “The Second Coming of Jesus and Lazarus,” it is a book “to be read aloud to yourself in the voice of Bob Newhart.”

This book is one of a series of humorous books, written by diverse authors

and each blessed and approved by the non-deceased American comedy

person Bob Odenkirk. Volumes in the Odenkirk MeMOrial library

include satire, cartoons, Black Humor, Gentle Humor, Total Humor, and

they cover a broad range of subject matter, united only in their tendency

to provoke laughter and warm feelings of distraction. No textbooks or

pornography will be included in the series.

g e n r e

Nonfiction


October 2014

p r i c e

$26

pa g e s

320

i s b n

978-1-940450-40-7

t r i m s i z e

6" × 8.5"

r i g h t s

USCO

vISItA Nt SdAvE EG GER S

Visitants begins at 140 kilometers per hour, with Dave Eggers being driven across the Saudi Arabian desert by a hired driver who looks at him and says “American, boom boom!” Spanning over twenty years of travel, there are long, lighthearted and caterwauling adventures in places such as New Zealand, Idaho, Cuba and Thailand as well as briefer sketches of people he meets in Croatia, Egypt and Papua New Guinea. And there are meditative pieces from South Sudan and Syria that reveal another side to his ac-claimed books What Is the What and Zeitoun. Vast in scope, the collection is shot through with a sense of danger and adventure as well as constant wrestling with complex issues of equity, empathy and shared purpose.

p RAI SE FOR EG GER S:

“Wonderful. . . . [A Hologram for the King] is Death of a Salesman

set in post-industrial America.”

—Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW’s Bookworm

“Eggers’s first unabashedly fictional, original novel in some time

nonetheless grounds itself as firmly in the real world as Zeitoun or

What is the What….A spare but moving elegy for the American

century.” —Publishers Weekly

tEN YEAR S IN thE tuB

NICK hORNBY

with an introduction

by JEss waltEr

“[Ten Years in the Tub] measure[s] life not just in terms of books bought or read but also in common

reading experiences, often to hilarious effect.”

—DailyCandy

whItE G IRlShI ltON AlS

finalist for thE nbcc

awards in criticism

“Effortless, honest and fearless.”

––New York Times Book Review

“The read of the year.” —Junot Díaz

thE ENd OF wARJ OhN hORGAN

“A HEARTFELT AND IMPORTANT BOOK.”—THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

JOHN HORGANWITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DOUGLAS P. FRY

War is a fact of human nature. As long as we exist, it exists. That’s how the argument goes. But longtime Scientific American writer John Horgan disagrees. Applying the scientific method to war leads Horgan to a radical conclusion: biologically speaking, we are just as likely to be peaceful as violent. War is not preordained, and furthermore, it should be thought of as a solvable, scientific problem—like curing cancer. But war and cancer differ in at least one crucial way: whereas cancer is a stubborn aspect of nature, war is our creation. It’s our choice whether to unmake it or not.

With a new introduction by anthropologist Douglas P. Fry, in this compact treatise Horgan argues for a far-reaching paradigm shift with profound implications for policy students, ethicists, military men and women, teachers, philosophers, and, really, any engaged citizen.

A former senior writer at the Scientific American blog Cross-

Check, John Horgan has also written for the New York Times,

Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the

New Republic, Slate, Discover, the London Times, the Times Literary

Supplement, New Scientist, and other publications around the world.

“I’m heartened by this thoughtful, unflappable,

closely argued book. The End of War gives us new ways to understand

and resist the specious arguments of inevitabilists

and professional weaponeers.”

—NICHolsoN BAker

with a nEw introduc-

tion by douglas p. fry

The End of War gives us new ways to understand and resist the specious arguments of inevita-

bilists and professional weaponeers.”

—Nicholson Baker

hOw tO ORdER

PGW/Perseus Distributionphone: (800) 788-2123

fax: (800) [email protected]

KEEp I N tOuCh

Bookstores — Sam [email protected]

Publicity — Gabrielle [email protected]

Rights — Laura [email protected]

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McSweeney's Fall 2014 Books Catalog

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