Destroy This House

“An affecting portrait of a definitively dysfunctional family….Uhle’s book will hit home with many readers.” —Kirkus Reviews “What do you get when parents’ pursuit of happiness collides with a child’s need for stability? Astounding anecdotes, expired canned goods and hard-won insights on loyalty and love.” ?—Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States“The American Dream turns pathological in Amanda Uhle’s beautiful memoir, Destroy This House, as Uhle reckons with her parents’ snarled identities and confounding lifestyles. Poignant, wryly funny, and exquisitely written, Uhle masterfully depicts the confluence of ambition and greed, pioneerism and narcissism, love and pain. I devoured every sentence.” —Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation“Destined to become a classic in the daughter-memoir genre, Destroy This House offers a tour of one couple’s decaying, overdrawn world and the effect it had on their child, a devoted good-girl who did her best to help even as doing so began to compromise her own sanity. The author—a Gen-Xer whose indomitable spirit will be as familiar to readers as her cassette mixtapes—artfully excavates both her n’er-do-well parents’ decaying home and her own furious compassion.” —Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Also a Poet “An iconic, only-in-America fable of desperate Midwestern dreamers.” —Dave Eggers, author of A Hologram for the King“In her vivid and bracing debut, journalist Amanda Uhle turns her investigative skills inward, peeling back the layers of deception that shaped her childhood. Blending sharp inquiry with personal insight, she confronts the half-truths of her past, unraveling the tangled web of her parents’ grifts. Destroy This House is a wonderfully evocative exploration of family secrets and the ways they shaped this writer’s life.” —Adrienne Brodeur, bestselling author of WILD GAME: My Mother, Her Love, and Me“Confessional, vulnerable, honest, and scintillating. I loved every word.”  —Hannah Pittard, author of If You Love It, Let It Kill You“A fantastically entertaining tale of the most endearing grifters ever committed to print—who happen to be the author’s parents.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts “Amanda Uhle’s extraordinary memoir does what so few do, combining absolutely jaw-dropping material with the writerly skill to make it sing. I wanted to reread it immediately. It is a stunning debut you will recommend to everyone you know.” —Jennifer Traig, author of Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood

Amanda Uhle writes about culture, politics, and civil rights for The Washington Post, Politico Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Newsweek. Uhle is coeditor of the I, Witness series of first-person stories by youth activists, former director of the 826michigan youth writing and tutoring program, and cofounder, with Dave Eggers, of the International Congress of Youth Voices. Their work with youth writing organizations worldwide is documented in Unnecessarily Beautiful Spaces for Young Minds on Fire. Uhle is the publisher and executive director of McSweeney’s, an independent nonprofit publisher of distinctive books and magazines.