Secure Your Copy One Day By Gene Weingarten Available Through EReader Version

hard to beat this premise the history of one day in recent American history chosen through three random draws out of a hat month date and year and it's hard to beat the way Gene Weingarten executes itThe day Decemberis almost perfectly nondescript as well as perfectly situated between the two worlds bifurcated by the rise of the personal computer and internet It also helps that it takes place in the year I turnedyears old when I was too yoiung to remember but old enough to be influenced by the culture this book exploresAnd what a culture The rise of AIDS the seething yet ignored racism the big hair the last vestiges of kids doing whatever the hell they wanted until dinner the days when creepers and killers could operate without international media coverage and everyday men and women living their lives unaware of how their very way of being would be upended in less than a decade by enormous technological forces unleashed by young men with names like Gates and Jobs just then coming into their ownWeingarten distills all of this into what amounts toshort stories each a separate chronicle not only of what happened at a specific time that day but also the events leading up to it and spiraling away from it In some cases that involves issues as complicated as race AIDS and politics in others it's as simple as a grieving father's activism or a conflicted man's decision to change his sexHis writing style is what you'd expect from an award winning newspaper columnist It's the easygoing almost jocular style of the human interest writer He knows how to spin a yarn in other words and how to keep the reader guessing until the last minute That works almost all of the time sometimes the story is really so mundane that it can't support the

tension Weingarten attempts to create and sometimes the story is so serious and engrossing that Weingarten's informality is distracting But overall it's nearly perfect any book whose basis is drawn out of a hat can't take itself too seriously even if it's the product of six years of research Weingarten seems to understand that and as a result he creates a work that's greater than the sum of its parts a beautiful collection of stories that serve as a snapshot of an era long vanished Very excited to read One Day My husband and I have a book chapter devoted to our chance accidental meeting while I was on a date with another man on Sunday DecemberWe announced our engagement after two dates in two days Yes we're still togetheryears later Tip This spectacular work of reporting is not a true crime book per se but true crime readers are going to love it Thank you to Dutton an imprint of Penguin Random House for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest reviewDNFI really hate to say it but I had to put this down The idea was so great but the execution was lacking At first I was really enjoying the writing as it discussed a lot of topics that I'm currently learning about in school and I found that to be especially engaging However once that part ended I was left with disappointmentEach story became boring than the previous the first one was very strong and while I applaud the author for putting as much time and effort into this book as he did I don't applaud him for the oversexualized descriptions of women and some of the commentary against the validity of cultural appropriation After both of those offenses I decided that I couldn't continue It's truly a shame as I was very excited about the release of this book You win some you lose some I suppose Well the master of American feature writing has done it rising to his own challenge to prove once and for all that's there's no such thing as an uneventful day even if by bad luck of the draw that day happens to fall in the newspaper person's dead zone between Christmas and New Year's Gene Weingarten finds an impressive amount of totally human stories that happened on Decand goes back and re reports them unveiling an astonishing amount of details I never should have doubted him but I did Read it and weep I was horrified at this mans depiction of domestic violence Not one but TWO stories centered around horrible domestic violence both end in calling it a “love story” or just a case of a broken heart I have so many things I want to say to this writer All of the stories in this book could have been captivating but all I can think of is the two stories that read as above On New Year's Daytwo time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to literally pluck a day month and year from a hat That day chosen completely at random turned out to be Sunday Decemberby any conventional measure a most ordinary day Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thingThat Sunday between Christmas and New Year's turned out to be filled with comedy tragedy implausible irony cosmic comeuppances kindness cruelty heroism cowardice genius idiocy prejudice selflessness coincidence and startling moments of human connection along with evocative foreshadowing of momentous events yet to come Lives were lost Lives were saved Lives were altered in overwhelming ways Many of these events never made it into the news they were private dramas in the lives of private people They were utterly compelling One Day asks and answers the uestion of whether there is even such a thing as ordinary when we are talking about how we all lurch and stumble our way through the daily daunting challenge of being human What I liked best about this book was how it recreated a feel for the era What I liked least was how it recreated a feel for the era There are definitely aspects of society which have improved So hard to know how to rate this book Really stellar concept but the execution can't live up to it A few of the stories were really interesting and well written Many were kind of boring Many were written with weirds style sexism and judgments from the author There is no such thing as an ordinary life Mark TwainIt seems theres no such thing as an ordinary day either This book is full of captivating stories many which spin out into multiple dramas events that changed the course of lives some that ended tragically all which made me ponder what at first seems like the mundane but is actually miraculous the sublimity of every momentIts a clever concept one which is best left for the author to explain Like all origin stories involving writers this one involves desperation My editor and I were bouncing ideas off each other for books and I wondered what happened on MayHe said thats a good idea try to find a single random day the most irreducible unit of human experience really midnight to midnight and examine the idea of whether theres even such a thing as an ordinary day Or does every day encompass the full human conditionAs it turns out when they asked three strangers to pull names out of a hat they ended up with a Sunday the worst news day of the week with a day between Christmas and New Years the worst news week of the year and in what they deemed to be an unremarkable year DecemberAnd yet the author who believes theres a story in everything provides us withunconnected stories that go beyond the facts and players The stories range from the simple a problematic weather vane to the heroic two different men in two different towns try to save children from a fire to the tragic and horrifying homicide and its aftermath There are jubilant stories and heart wrenching ones a few famous folks but mostly just a lot of people like us or those we knowThis book took six years to complete and I can understand why They are not merely human interest stories they dig deep and wide provoke thoughtful consideration and in the end made me feel the significance of every day every choice and all that makes up a life A string of ordinary days and every day moments that lead to a whole What the author calls the wonder of being We are all serving time on death row only the length of our stay is indeterminate Dead people walking If our lives are to be fulfilling we must be grateful for the experience aloneAmen to that Gene I highly recommend this book for its storytelling but most of all for the far reaching goal of trying to explain the concept of a day the soul of it and to answer the uestion of whether a day can encompass the full human condition Ill leave it up to you to decide once you read the book Gene Weingarten is a master storyteller so this book of storiesresearched on a day picked out of a hatis pure pleasure for the reader Every moment contains a full story of the human condition according to Weingarten and it's just a matter of finding it and fleshing it out How he does this is his art and brilliant writer's techniue and understanding of mechanicsI first read Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize winning The Fiddler in the Subway where his introduction serves as a master class for any writer in search of a teacher One Day features the master at work Thank you Mr Weingarten A Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and humorist for the Washington Post and author of a number of books.