Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody

Ian Frazier. Penguin Books, $6.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-14-010603-9

""The work of a true listener and observer . . . Americana at its idiosyncratic best,'' PW wrote of these five New Yorker pieces. Frazier (Dating Your Mom) blends detailed reportage and subtle humor in essays on a household-hints columnist, Montana's bears, fishing and a Kansas town's anniversary celebration with Cheyenne Indians whose ancestors raided the village a century earlier. (May)

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