gopnik, adam

"In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness"--Provided by publisher.

Adam Gopnik recounts the experiences he had after moving his family from Paris to Manhattan, describing the family's struggle to adapt to urban life in the hectic city and rebuild once more after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Adam Gopnik describes the experiences he, his wife, and their infant son had while traveling through Paris in the late 1990s.