David Rakoff
Author
Language
English
Description
The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A daughter in early 20th century Chicago; a hobo during the Great Depression; an office girl in 1950s Manhattan; the young man reveling in 1960s San Francisco, then later tends to dying friends as the AIDS pandemic hits; as the new century opens, a man who has lost his way finds a measure of peace in a photograph he discovers in an old box-an image of pure and simple...
Author
Publisher
Doubleday
Pub. Date
2005.
Language
English
Description
In these essays, social satirist Rakoff journeys into the land of unchecked plenty that is contemporary America, skewering overconsumption, greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity. Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism; our manic getting and spending have now become celebrated as moral virtues. Whether contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good-times-and-chicken-wings...