Allegedly found in the ruins of a bombed-out dog kennel in France during World War I, then brought to Los Angeles by Lee Duncan, the soldier who found and trained him, by 1927 Rin Tin Tin had become Hollywood's number one box-office star. Susan Orlean's book--about the dog and the legend--is a poignant exploration of the enduring bond between humans and animals. It is also a richly textured history of twentieth-century entertainment and entrepreneurship....

From Florida's swamps to its courtrooms, the New Yorker writer follows one deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man's possibly criminal pursuit of an endangered flower. Determined to clone the rare ghost orchid, Polyrrhiza lindenii, John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America's strange flower-selling subculture, along with the Seminole Indians who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean -- and the reader...

While walking to school, lugging a heavy backpack through New York City one morning, a disgruntled child questions why babies are so lazy, spending their days on useless activities such as napping and babbling rather than getting jobs.

Susan Orlean re-opens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to the beloved insitution of libraries.

Ann-Marie, a big-wave surfer on the North Shore of Oahu, drives to make a comeback after nearly drowning in a surfing competition. Her life becomes more complicated by her romance with a handsome football player. Ann-Marie and her surfer buddies work as maids at a posh resort and share a beach shack with Anne-Marie's wayward young sister. Ann-Marie struggles between her need to prove herself and her desire to take the easy way out.

Presents a collection of twenty-five essays originally published in various periodicals by a number of noted writers including Roger Angell, Andrea Barrett, Jonathan Franzen, and others.

A photographer obsessed with the prostitutes in New Orleans' red-light district, circa 1917, is bewitched by a twelve-year-old child prostitute.

"David Grann meets Susan Orlean in this page-turning true story of an underground operation into the mysterious world of alligator poaching and its larger than life Floridian characters To catch a Florida Man, you have to become one, and that's what Officer Jeff Babauta did. As his ponytailed, whiskey-soaked alter ego, he established Sunshine Alligator Farm. His goal? Infiltrate the shady world of illegal poachers in the Florida Everglades in order...

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a "comic weekly." And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era, from Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker to Woody Allen and Steve Martin. This anthology gathers together the funniest work of more than seventy contributors. Parodists take on not only...

A high-action portrait of the infamous historical pirate who pursued high-seas ambitions as a youth before settling down in New Orleans describes how he became a respected businessman, made pivotal contributions to the War of 1812 and exposed a British invasion plot.