John Hodgman

The best-selling author of The Areas of My Expertise presents a tongue-in-cheek compendium of made-up facts that fall under such headings as "The Method by Which We Elect Our Presidents," "How to Be a Famous Minor Television Personality," and "Gambling: The Sport of the Asthmatic Man."

"Ander Monson gives us a world of promise lost: hotel pools filled with refuse, wadded ATM receipts, cracked windshields in a land of endless snow ... His elegies focus on copper mines, tourism, family, and even amateur radio, but more than that, they mourn the loss of purity, of wholeness and structure, in a world where 'the future is a shoulder without the promise of an arm.'"--Cover flap.