The Fiddler in the Subway

Simply the best storyteller around, Weingarten describes the world as you think it is before revealing how it actually is---in narratives that are by turns hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative, but always memorable.

Millions of people know the title piece about violinist Joshua Bell, which originally began as a stunt: What would happen if you put a world-class musician outside a Washington, D.C., subway station to play for spare change? Would anyone even notice? The answer was no. Weingarten's story went viral, becoming a widely referenced lesson about life lived too quickly. Other classic stories---the one about "The Great Zucchini," a wildly popular but personally flawed children's entertainer; the search for the official "Armpit of America"; a profile of the typical American nonvoter---all of them reveal as much about their readers as they do their subjects.

"Giving Gene Weingarten the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing was like giving Martin Scorsese the Oscar for Best Director: it's not about what he did that year, it's about what he's been doing for decades, better than anybody, even before people started to notice. He's the best nonfiction writer in America, and only a few of us knew it. Now, with this anthology, we get to say: Told ya."---Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me

"`The Great Zucchini' is the greatest feature story ever written."---Erik Wemple, The Washington City Paper

"Gene Weingarten is the best writer in American journalism. He's a master at finding a story that nobody else would have thought to pursue, researching it doggedly, and telling it in such a riveting way that you feel as though you're reading a terrific novel."---Dave Barry, author, humorist, and columnist