Out spring 2027 from Duke University Press

“One of America’s drollest, most insightful cultural observers, Dan Kois is at once a sharp reporter and a generous-hearted participant. In this funny, affecting collection of personal essays about the hunt for creativity, Kois paints a glorious portrait of a country of ordinary people as artists, deep in the struggle to build something truly beautiful and new." 
–Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker critic and author of I Like to Watch and Cue the Sun!

“A masterclass in essay writing. These pieces are filled with effervescent humor, sharp cultural analysis, and a deep and abiding curiosity about art, about how it is made and how we consume it. They are also tremendously fun to read.”
–Mark O’Connell, author of A Thread of Violence and To Be a Machine

“Much like the quixotic subjects of his acutely observed, companionably funny essays, Dan Kois invites us along on adventures we’d have never thought to go on ourselves—tragicomic tours of late-capitalist aesthetics; off-handedly profound journeys to the creative imagination’s outer limits—but by which we are forever changed.”
–Megan O'Grady, author of How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters With Art and Our Selves