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From the discovery of the authors face in a centuryold photograph to a tripleamputee hospice director working at the border of life and death here are thirteen hopeful heartbreaking and profound essays from one of the most intelligent compassionate and curious authors working today Elizabeth Gilbert

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Kirkus Reviews

Beneath the selfassured and serious faces we wear every human life is full of longing guesswork and confusiona scramble to do the best we can and make everything up as we go along In these wideranging essays Jon Mooallem chronicles the beauty of our blundering and the inescapability of our imperfections He investigates the collapse of a multimilliondollar birdbreeding scam run by an aging farmer known as the Pigeon King intimately narrates a harrowing escape from Californias deadliest wildfire visits an eccentric Frenchman building a town at what he claims is the center of the world shadows a man through his first day of freedom after twentyone years in prison and moreall with a deep conviction that its our vulnerability not our victories that connect us

Mooallems powers of perception have established him as one of the most distinctive empathic and clearsighted narrative journalists working today The Wall Street Journal has called his writing as much art as it is journalism and Jia Tolentino has praised his grace and command In Serious Face Mooallem brings to life the desperate hopes and urgent fears of the people he meets telling their stories with empathy humor insight and kindness These elegant moving essays form an idiosyncratic tapestry of human experience our audacity and fallibility our bumbling and goodwill In moments of calamity and within the extreme absurdity of everyday life can we learn to love the people we really are behind the serious faces we show the world