Joyride: A Memoir

"Celebrated journalist Susan Orlean became a pop culture icon when her nonfiction book The Orchid Thief became the basis for the fanciful 2002 film Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman (Orlean was played by Meryl Streep). Her new book, Joyride, part writing manual and part memoir, deconstructs a handful of her best-known articles and books (including The Orchid Thief) and answers the questions most often asked at writing conferences: How do you come up with ideas? How do you report a full-length profile? How do you approach structuring a book for the first time? Though she breezes past most details of her life, the book is a master class in nonfiction writing, and Orlean instructs with humility and warmth."