The End of the End of the Earth

A collection of essays by one of today’s best writers, author of the bestselling novels “The Corrections,” “Freedom,” and “Purity.”

In these vivid, colorful, and profound publicistic works he touches on a wide range of painful topics of the modern age. There is a detailed analysis of recent climate changes and a warning about the harmful consequences that can come from ignoring them; reflections on the importance and uniqueness of birds; memories of New York in the early eighties with its dramatic division into rich and poor, white and black; an analysis of the works of Sherry Turkle, arguably the key modern researcher of the influence of digital technologies on human behavior; or the exposition of ten rules of the novelist.

But whatever Franzen writes about, he always does it brightly and grippingly—and manages to make global conclusions even from the smallest incidents. With which it’s hard not to agree.