Featured Originals
Now That We Have Tasted Hope
In 2010, the self-immolation of a produce vendor in Tunisia catalyzed a series of massive democratic revolutions and uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa that would come to be known as the Arab Spring. In some countries, strongmen who had held power for decades collapsed under the force of youthful popular movements. In others, despots violently and mercilessly clamped down on demonstrators.
Now That We Have Tasted Hope—whose title is drawn from the poem "Now That We Have Tasted Hope," by Khaled Mattawa—collects the most important primary source documents from those historic uprisings, telling the story of the Arab Spring from the perspective of those who lived it. Voices from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria provide a comprehensive and captivating narrative of the momentous events of last year. From the harrowing accounts of tortured protesters to the hollow appeals of crumbling regimes and the triumphant songs of revolutionaries, these documents catalog the events of the Arab Spring in all its complexity and drama.
Now That We Have Tasted Hope, a McSweeney's / Byliner Original, is a collaboration between San Francisco–based McSweeney's and Byliner.
After Friday Night Lights
by Buzz Bissinger
In this long-anticipated sequel to his now-classic Friday Night Lights, bestselling author Buzz Bissinger writes of his deep and complex twenty-five-year relationship with Boobie Miles, the magical Permian Panthers running back whose rare skills and heartbreaking story helped ignite the Friday Night Lights phenomenon. Miles’s career was forever altered during a routine scrimmage, his left knee mangled and his dreams gone before they’d truly begun. It was from the ashes of that injury, Bissinger has said, that “Boobie and I truly found each other, despite the gulf in our backgrounds. He needed someone in his life, and I became that person. Or as much of that person as I could become. I am helping him—and he is helping me.” After Friday Night Lights is far more than just Bissinger’s return to Odessa, Texas. It’s about love, struggle, joy, and a relationship far more powerful than either author or subject could have imagined. Read an excerpt >>
Farthest North
by Todd Balf
Winter 1854. The men had been trapped for almost two years, their ship frozen in a bank of ice. Some had lost limbs to scurvy and frostbite; some had succumbed to Arctic hysteria; all of them were starving, reduced to eating rats and the animal specimens they’d preserved for science. But one person remained undaunted: Elisha Kent Kane, the unlikely leader who would survive mutiny and near death to go farther north than anyone had before. This is the incredible, forgotten story of America’s first great Arctic expedition. Read an excerpt >>
"In this brisk and engrossing survival narrative, Todd Balf restores Kane to his rightful place as one of America's most fascinating folk heroes."
Don't Eat Cat
by Jess Walter
This brilliantly entertaining send-up of zombie fiction offers a twist on America’s favorite monster: You don’t have to be dead to be a zombie. The aggressive, drug-addled dimwits who make life tiresome, if not downright stressful, for the residents of Seattle have an appetite for rodents, house pets, and the occasional human. Alas, our hero is in love with one of them. Read an excerpt >>
Lifeboat No. 8
by Elizabeth Kaye
THE NO. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER!
When the Titanic started sinking, who would make it off alive? To tell the little-known story of one of the first lifeboats to leave the ship, Elizabeth Kaye vividly re-creates the disaster and describes what it was like to survive that cold and deceptively calm night a century ago. Read an excerpt >>
Sober Is My New Drunk
by Paul Carr
The bestselling humor writer and notorious tech blogger describes how social media helped solve his drinking problem—and explains how Twitter, Facebook, and the Internet can be more useful than AA when it comes to remaining clean and sober. Read an excerpt >>
I’m Starved for You
by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood, one of the most prophetic authors of our time, delivers a fictional tale of sexual obsession that is equal parts Tom Jones and Brave New World. A hilarious yet harrowing story that lays bare the very real dangers of trading liberty for safety, I'm Starved for You evokes the irrepressibility of human appetite and asks just how far a man and a woman are willing to go to get what they’re truly hungry for. Read an excerpt >>
One Way Forward
by Lawrence Lessig
Something is clearly rotten in our Republic. Americans are disillusioned with the political system and angry as hell. They feel like outsiders in their own nation, powerless over their own lives, blocked from having a real voice in how they are governed. But all of this can change. Lawrence Lessig, the renowned Harvard Law School professor and political activist presents a user-friendly, bipartisan manifesto for revolution just when we need it the most. His audaciously simple solution? Kill political corruption at its root: money. Read an excerpt >>
Please note: the Google eBookstore and Apple iBookstore versions of One Way Forward are DRM-free
Death Comes to Happy Valley
by Jonathan Mahler
Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State football coach, modeled his life and career after the classic heroes he loved, but in the end his story was a modern tragedy. The most winning coach ever in college football, crafter of The Grand Experiment that put honor and academics above all else, finished his days under the dark cloud of shame and unspeakable scandal. Bestselling writer Jonathan Mahler’s admiring yet honest assessment shows what can happen when a school, and an entire community, falls under the spell of a larger-than-life man who was, in fact, merely mortal. Read an excerpt >>
The Secret World of Saints
by Bill Donahue
Stigmata. Self-mortification. Miracles. It takes a lot to become a saint in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The journey to canonization is long (sometimes, as in the case of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian who just got the nod from the Vatican, it can take centuries), lurid (decayed body parts play a role), and, nowadays, surprisingly cutting-edge. (Miracles can be determined through MRIs.) This rollicking yet thorough investigation of the Church’s most mysterious tradition provides a fascinating inside look into how the holy earn their places in heaven and introduces us to America’s newest saint. Read an excerpt >>
"My sinful covetousness for Bill Donahue's talents and the fun he's having here has put me out of the running for sainthood. I love his story anyway."
