First published 2015
Michael Paterniti examines human nature through seventeen essays that span continents and circumstances. He picks apples with a giant in rural Ukraine while contemplating mortality. He confronts a potential suicide jumper on a bridge in Nanjing, China. In Dodge City, Kansas, he observes racial tensions tear apart a community from his base at a roadside motel. Paterniti recreates the final dinner of French president François Mitterrand in a countryside restaurant. He drives across America carrying Albert Einstein's preserved brain in a Tupperware container. The author investigates disasters that reveal how people respond to catastrophe: a plane crash near Nova Scotia, Haiti's devastating earthquake, and Japan's tsunami. Through encounters with ordinary individuals and historical figures, Paterniti explores grief and joy, memory and human bonds. His approach resists simple explanations while seeking to understand our capacity for survival and love.
Genres: essays, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, exploration, vignettes
Setting: China, Dodge City, France, Haiti, Japan, Kansas, Nova Scotia, Nanjing, Ukraine
Period: 21st Century
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