“This is My Serious Face” is a witty essay about Mooallem’s doppelgänger, a famous, graceful bullfighter who looked just like him, complete with the “conspicuously crooked” face that has people “scrutinizing its angles, considering it as an object.” After a heart-rending piece on human threats to Hawaii’s endangered monk seals, Mooallem offers up a brief yet profound look at a looming crisis inherent in the “prisoner reentry program” in the U.S., which “tends to focus on solving structural problems, like providing housing, job training, or drug treatment, but easily loses sight of the profound disorientation of the individual people being released.” The author’s narrative prowess is on full display in a powerful, tragic essay on the wildfire devastation in Paradise, California, leaving “a realm beyond disaster, where catastrophes live.” An insightful profile of acclaimed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman-“known for films so rich with surreality and self-referential lunacy that they feel as if they might be spun apart by the force of their strangeness, yet miraculously cohere”-playfully collapses in on itself, and Mooallem closes with a reflective inquiry on Neanderthals, Gibraltar Man, and how we use flawed information to reach feelings of “superiority over other people.”Ī winning, captivating, engrossing collection.

Miller, a triple-amputee palliative-care physician, the author describes how Miller has dedicated his life to a profound question: “What is a good death?” In a harrowing, suspenseful personal piece about a kayak trip with two friends in Alaska when Mooallem was in his 20s, the author recounts one friend being hit by a falling tree, suffering serious injuries, and the unlikely, lifesaving Coast Guard rescue. He suggests that the thread holding them together is one line: “ Why are we not better than we are?” In an emotional, inspirational essay about B.J. In his latest book, New York Times Magazine writer at large Mooallem gathers a diverse dozen of his thoughtful, probing essays. A master essayist ranges far and wide with aplomb.

This Is Chance! by Jon Mooallem