Even while writing acclaimed novels like The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner has penned essays that are personal yet manage to add perspectives on political, artistic, and cultural issues. In 20 razor-sharp texts, Kushner comments on authors Marguerite Duras, Cormac McCarthy, and Denis Johnson, but also takes a journey through a Palestinian refugee camp, chronicles an illegal motorcycle race down the Baja Peninsula, and discusses 1970s wildcat strikes in Fiat factories. Kushner writes of her love of classic cars, and reminisces about her early years in the music scene of her hometown, San Francisco.

"I honestly don't know how she is able to know so much (about motorcycle racing, Italian radical politics) and convey all of it in such a completely entertaining and mesmerizing way."—George Saunders