nonfiction essays. Liked most of them, but suggest skipping altogether "Shapinksy's Karma" (Lawrence Weschler) and I eventually lost interest in "Fortune's Smile: World Series of Poker" (James McManus). I maybe can't speak for 2007 when this was published, but feel like today's compilation would definitely include more women (Laura Hillenbrand? Sheryl WuDunn? I know many women have produced great writing on more weighty topics than working as a hostess at an upscale restaurant/bar.)--though I don't necessarily disagree with the title--since "king" does not necessarily have to continue as a gender-specific noun, just as "actor" can be used to describe both men and women. ( )

I picked up this collection of essays after seeing it on my Goodreads feed. While some of the essays are on topics that I wouldn't necessarily find interesting, I did enjoy many of them, especially the ones by Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Klosterman, Mark Bowden, and Coco Henson Scales. Although I skimmed over some of the others, they were well-written and would have great appeal to those who are interested in the ideas and topics. This really is sort of like "This American Life," where not the stories are about something you'd make an effort to research, but are interesting when you do happen to catch them. I know I'll be looking up some of these writers to read more of their work. ( )

Every time I finished an article in this collection, I immediately wanted to tell everyone all about it--they're that interesting and thought-provoking and entertaining. But then I'd stop myself and just say "You've really got to read this book", because I realized that half the joy of reading these articles is in discovering them yourself. So, the only thing I'm going to say on this collection is to read Ira Glass's introduction after reading the articles; he's so giddy about how awesome they are that he ends up spoiling some of their surprise--not "plot"-wise, but the surprise of what makes them so good. It's worth discovering that part for yourself. ( )

An anthology of nonfiction pieces fra magazines and newspapers. Most of the stories are impressive and leave you yearning to share what you've learned with someone else. ( )

I can't really fault the book for being eight years old and thus no longer "new" when I received it as a Christmas gift. I can, however, fault a book billing itself on its newness for containing many essays that were ten years old or more when the book was published; a quick calculation indicates the average age-at-publication of the essays at nine years.

Nor, I suppose, can I fault a book talking about "Kings" of non-fiction for being overwhelmingly male-dominated. Twelve of the fourteen authors are male, with the female authors relegated to writing about female experiences of male spaces, or of contexts where women are expected to please men; Susan Orlean writes a profile of a supposedly average (i.e. white, suburban, and middle-class - this is in fact specifically described as the description of "typical") ten-year-old boy, and Coco Scales writes about working as a hostess in an exclusive LA nightclub. Not only the authors but the subject matter for the remainder of the book are drenched in testosterone; should you choose to read this book despite this review (since it definitely does have a target audience, after all), you'll read about beef cattle, the World Series of Poker, Saddam Hussein, and World War II.

Midway through David Foster Wallace's interminable profile of a minor conservative talk radio host, I seriously considered abandoning the book half-read; instead, I decided to give each of the remaining essays a chance. I bailed partway through three of the remaining portions, but finished the last four essays.

Having opined about two of the three key words in the title, I suppose it's time to talk about "nonfiction"; all of these are definitely non-fiction, but it's all in a narrow genre of journalistic nonfiction heavily focused on individual experience; there's little history here and no science. ( )