Experience a "brilliant exploration" (Walter Isaacson) of America's political culture war and a hilarious call to arms for the elite, with three chapters on foibles of the pandemic era. "I can think of no one more suited to defend elitism than Stein, a funny man with hands as delicate as a baby full of soft-boiled eggs." --Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! The night Donald Trump won the presidency, our author Joel Stein, Thurber Prize finalist and former staff writer for Time Magazine, instantly knew why. The main reason wasn't economic anxiety or racism. It was that he was anti-elitist. Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy papers, Davos, international treaties and the people who think they're better than you. People like Joel Stein. Trump represented something far more appealing, which was beating up people like Joel Stein. In a full-throated defense of academia, the mainstream press, medium-rare steak, and civility, Joel Stein fights against populism. He fears a new tribal elite is coming to replace him, one that will fend off expertise of all kinds and send the country hurtling backward to a time of wars, economic stagnation and the well-done steaks doused with ketchup that Trump eats. To find out how this shift happened and what can be done, Stein spends a week in Roberts County, Texas, which had the highest percentage of Trump voters in the country. He goes to the home of Trump-loving Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams; meets people who create fake news; and finds the new elitist organizations merging both right and left to fight the populists. All the while using the biggest words he knows.

As emotional as it is funny, Swish is the moving account of one man's journey from stereotype to truth.Joel Derfner is a knitter, an aerobics instructor, a cheerleader, a go-go dancer, and a musical theater composer, but when he realizes one day that he's a walking gay cliché, he embarks on a quest for deeper meaning. Confronting the demons of his past at an LGBT summer camp, using the Internet to "meet" men (many, many men), or going undercover to a conference of ex-gays, he discovers that what he's looking for--and sometimes even finds, hidden under the surface of everyday life--is his own identity.