Tad Friend is a staff writer at The New Yorker, crafting the magazine's Letter from California. His writing is known for its keen observations and insightful explorations of contemporary life. Friend delves into subjects that reflect American culture and society, examining them with precision. His style is distinguished by elegant prose and a witty perspective.
Engage in a unique blend of humor and adventure as you navigate a heated debate about a sitcom laugh track, uncover methods for pulling off audacious crimes, and immerse yourself in the mystical world of the reindeer people in Mongolia's mountains. This book promises a thrilling journey filled with unexpected twists and cultural insights.
"Is the father I wanted the father my children want me to be, too? Or is the father I got the father I've inevitably become? Almost everyone yearns to know their parents more thoroughly before they die, to solve some of those lifelong mysteries. Maybe, just maybe, those answers will help you live your own life. But life doesn't stop to wait. In his fifties, writer Tad Friend is grappling with being a husband and father and trying to grasp who he is as a son. Torn between two families, he careens between two stages in life. On some days he feels vigorous, on the brink of greatness when he plays tournament squash. On others, he feels distinctly old, troubled by his yawning distance from millennial sensibilities or by his own face in the mirror, by a grimace that's so like his father's. Theodore Friend, an erudite historian and the former president of Swarthmore College, was gregarious and charming with strangers yet cerebral with his children. Tad writes that "trying to reach him in any deeper way always felt like ice fishing." Yet now Tad's father, known to his family as Day, seems concerned chiefly with the flavor of ice cream in his bowl and, when pushed, interested only in reconsidering his view of Franklin Roosevelt. Then Tad finds his father's files, a trove of passionate confessions that reveals a man entirely different from and more complex than the exasperatingly logical father Day was so determined to be. It turns out that Tad has been behaving self-destructively in the same way Day was--a secret each kept from everyone, even themselves. These discoveries make Tad reconsider his own role, both as a father and a son. But is it too late for both of them?"-- Provided by publisher
A History and a Celebration of the World's Greatest Game
Ever since the Dark Ages, when a few Scots ambled over the dunes with their het kolvin sticks, slapping a ball around in something akin to golf, no sport has more universally or irreversibly awed its players and fans. THE ULTIMATE GOLF BOOK captures the world's ultimate sporting passion as it has never been captured before, with a lively, authoritative history, stunning illustrations, and perhaps the finest collection of original writing on the sport ever assembled between two covers. Putting a fresh, contemporary spin on the centuries-old story of golf, Sports Illustrated's colorful senior writer John Garrity has written a delightful, loose-limbed riff of a history that travels the globe and the links, covering the key personalities, events, advances in technique and technology, proliferation of interest, and curious mystery of this international obsession. Complementing the history are twenty personal essays from a diverse group of literary low-handicappers, musing on everything from the Age of Tiger, to the woes of the lowly club pro, to the charm of playing golf in the dead of winter, to giving up the game altogether. All of this plays out against the dramatic backdrop of more than 300 photographs and illustrations, many rare and historic, many commissioned especially for this volume, which is truly one of a kind. From the tee to the green, the clubhouse to the nuthouse, THE ULTIMATE GOLF BOOK is a must-have for any serious student of the game.