You could summarize The Orchid Thief as "Florida is a crazy place, y'all." It's one of the better non-fiction books I've read recently, starting with a scheme by John Laroche, a not-precisely-likeable but still very interesting fellow whom the author interviews and follows around in the course of...
I picked this up at the Macomb Friends of the Library book sale last fall because it was a $2 hardback and because the first essay is about something that happened in Springfield, IL (where my sister lives). OH, and because it's by Susan Orlean, one of my all-time favorite writers. But I thought ...
Susan Orlean presents stories of a range of colorful celebrities and everyday citizens in biographies that ran in a number of periodicals, most notably The New Yorker, where she was a staff writer at the time of the collection's publication. She demonstrates a keen capacity to hone in on what mak...