In Mid-Air

'Engaging, witty, thoughtful, clever, casual, ebullient, erudite and thoroughly modern' Spectator

'A dazzling talent - hilarious, winning and deft' Malcolm Gladwell

IN MID-AIR is a collection of short essays by the acclaimed writer and speaker, Adam Gopnik. Known for his ability to perceive 'the whole world in a grain of sand', he uses this format to take a dizzying range of subjects and intricately explore their meaning to our lives - as people, as citizens and as families.

From how he works so that his daughter can have holes in her clothes, to why appropriation is more empowering than oppressing; from French sex to binge-watching TV, from the secret of a happy marriage to why we should mention the war - each topic is illuminated by his erudition and wit.

As in their original form on the radio, Gopnik's essays - each one a pleasure garden of wry confessions, self-deprecating asides, wordplay and striking insights - feel like the most intimate of conversations between writer and reader; yet at the same time they capture a public forum of pithy debate and tender persuasion. Above all, IN MID-AIR initiates a sense of wonder in the ordinary that yearns to be shared.

“Nuanced, elegiac . . . Gopnik's essays [...] owe much to the idea of Alistair Cook's Letter from America . . . single, deeply intelligent voices allowed to expand on a subject . . . You trust his judgement . . . The article of hope or faith that Gopnik still clings to is the idea that serious, humane thinking and writing , of the kind that teases out the truth of the world, can still generate enlightenment. [The essay form] as this collection nimbly demonstrates, allows you to watch and enjoy another mind confront the world at its most problematic. It feels like a dying art.”

The distinctive brilliance of Gopnik's essays lies in his ability to pick up a subject one would never have believed possible to think deeply about then cover it in thoughts. He is truly able to see the whole world in a grain of sand - New York Times Book Review

Avid intelligence and a nimble pen - John Updike

'I need to read anything that Adam Gopnik writes . . . His acuity, grace, sensitive intelligence (in short, his brilliance) are, as ever, dazzlingly displayed and yet with the lightest of touches - Nigella Lawson

Brilliantly insightful . . . Any writer who can take subjects as diverse as Wilson Bentley's snow crystal photographs, Dickens's Christmas stories and the myth that the Inuit have dozens of different words for snow, and find something original and interesting to say about each of them, has to be worth reading - Sunday Times, on Winter

Adam Gopnik has been writing for the New Yorker since 1986. He is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism, and the George Polk Award for magazine reporting. From 1995 to 2000 he lived in Paris; he now lives in New York City with his wife and their two children.

'Engaging, witty, thoughtful, clever, casual, ebullient, erudite and thoroughly modern' Spectator 'A dazzling talent - hilarious, winning and deft' Malcolm Gladwell IN MID-AIR is a collection of short essays by the acclaimed writer and speaker, Adam Gopnik. Known for his ability to perceive 'the whole world in a grain of sand', he uses this format to take a dizzying range of subjects and intricately explore their meaning to our lives - as people, as citizens and as families. From how he works so that his daughter can have holes in her clothes, to why appropriation is more empowering than oppressing; from French sex to binge-watching TV, from the secret of a happy marriage to why we should mention the war - each topic is illuminated by his erudition and wit. As in their original form on the radio, Gopnik's essays - each one a pleasure garden of wry confessions, self-deprecating asides, wordplay and striking insights - feel like the most intimate of conversations between writer and reader; yet at the same time they capture a public forum of pithy debate and tender persuasion. Above all, IN MID-AIR initiates a sense of wonder in the ordinary that yearns to be shared.

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