About a Mountain

Advance praise for About a Mountain:

“John D’Agata is a sublime technician of language and a writer of the gravest moral concerns. Beneath a blizzard of fact he forges a lament for nothing less than the future of civilization and, just for good measure, reengineers the possibilities for literature itself. It’s a brilliant, sorrowful book that shows us, with piercing, lyric detail, how vulnerable our most basic assumptions really are. Here is the literary essay raised to the highest form of art.” —Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women

“John D’Agata, in this brilliantly unsettling new book, picks up a thread, or several threads, and follows them, stays with them, letting each lead him deeper and deeper into uncharted territory, until by the end we are in the dark heart of America. Utterly amazing.” —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Ticking Is the Bomb

"Unquestionably art, a breathtaking piece of writing."—Charles Bock, The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times - Charles Bock

…an engrossing story and an often impressive piece of reporting…D'Agata's prime reason for steering us through all the glittery factoids and scholarship is to take us to the ledge of what knowledge can provide, and to document how perilous it can be to stand on that ledge. These 200 pages are nothing less than a chronicle of the compromises and lies, the back-room deals and honest best intentions that have delivered us to this precarious moment in history. The book is a shouted question about who we are and how we move forward. This is how art is made.

John D’Agata is the author of Halls of Fame and editor of The Next American Essay and The Lost Origins of the Essay. He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.