One of the most unique journalists of the digital age, Brian Phillips will gladly spend months or years doing frontline investigations, resulting in off-kilter essays on the globalized world, the consequences of history, the power of myth, and the ways people attempt to find meaning. In the eight ambitious essays collected here, Phillips searches for tigers in India, follows dogsledders along the thousand-mile Iditarod, and uncovers a multigenerational mystery involving an Oklahoma oil tycoon whose niece became his stepdaughter and eventually his wife. "Phillips is a cultural codebreaker of the highest order, unlocking the hidden systems of our mad world. Hilarious, nimble, and thoroughly illuminating."—Colson Whitehead