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Adapted from "Zinsser on Friday," The American Scholar's National Magazine Award-Winning Essay Series For nineteen months William Zinsser, author of the best-selling On Writing Well and many other books, wrote a weekly column for the website of the American Scholar magazine. This cornucopia was devoted mainly to culture and the arts, the craft of writing, and travels to remote places, along with the movies, American popular song, email, multitasking, baseball, Central Park, Tina Brown, Pauline Kael, Steve Martin, and other complications of modern life. Written with elegance and humor, these pieces are now collected in The Writer Who Stayed. "If you value vintage journalism of an old-fashioned vividness and integrity please, please read this book."--Wall Street Journal "Our 'endlessly supple' English language will, Zinsser says, 'do anything you ask it to do, if you treat it well. Try it and see.' Try him and see craftsmanship."--Geo...

"Highly recommended"--Library Journal "In this account of the world adventures of two splendid jazz artists, Bill Zinsser has given us one of the most exciting books about America's original art form that I've ever read. It's a revelation."--Studs Terkel Since 1955, Dwike Mitchell and Willie Ruff have been playing, teaching, and sharing jazz around the U.S. and around the world. William Zinsser, one of our finest chroniclers of American life, tells their story as he travels with the duo to China, to Davenport, Iowa, to New York City, and--with Willie Ruff--to St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, where Ruff journeys back to the roots of Western music in order to understand jazz's musical legacy. Zinsser also accompanies Mitchell and Ruff as they visit their hometowns in Florida and Alabama. We listen as the two men tell of growing up in small towns in the American South of the 1930s and 40s; as they tell about the teachers, community leaders, and fa...

"This inspiring guide includes places everyone means to go to some day, all described with the usual clarity of the author of On Writing Well."--The New York Times "A fascinating take on 'the search for memory' and how certain places have come to symbolize deep American principles."--Kirkus Reviews Join William Zinsser as he visits sixteen of our nation's most treasured historic sites--unlearning cliched assumptions and rediscovering fundamental truths about America. American Places--and the ideals that Zinsser discovers these places represent--will never go out of fashion. "Speaking across the centuries with stone and symbol, narrative and myth, America's iconic places remind us of our anchoring principles and best intentions. 'This is where we started and what we believed and who we hoped to become, ' these places say. At least that's what they said to me." "Niagara Falls existed only in the attic of my mind where c...