Nicholson Baker ranges over the map of life to examine what ails us, what eases our pain, and what gives us joy. Baker - recently hailed as 'one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time' by The New York Times - moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the OED, and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola.