Jon Mooallem

Serious Face Jon Mooallem

An exhilarating collection of twelve hopeful, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly profound essays from one of our most acclaimed practitioners of narrative journalism.

Jon Mooallem is a master storyteller whose boundless curiosity and powers of perception have established him as one of the most distinctive, empathic, and clear-sighted journalists of our era. From the collapse of a multi-million-dollar bird-breeding scam run by an aging farmer known as The Pigeon King to the intimate, philosophical pursuits of a triple-amputee doctor at a pioneering hospice in San Francisco, from the tragic life of the author's bullfighting doppelganger to a global society dedicated to the appreciation of clouds, Mooallem investigates hope, heartbreak, crime, punishment, idealism, and catharsis across the world and within himself.

The Wall Street Journal has called his writing as much art as it is journalism. Jia Tolentino has praised his grace and command, while Rebecca Skloot has called his writing funny, poignant, and surprising. In the twelve wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Serious Face, Mooallem grapples with offbeat everyday dramas and the weight of history with the same deep longing for connection and illumination. These elegant, moving pieces form an idiosyncratic tapestry of human experience: our audacity and imperfections, our blundering and goodwill, and the ways our stories ricochet through a complicated world.

In Serious Face, Mooallem showcases his remarkable ability to transport his readers, to bring to life the desperate hopes and urgent fears of the people he meets, and to tell their stories with clarity, insight, and kindness.