Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World »

Hip, irreverent, and with a voice that NPR fans of This American Life instantly perk up to, Sarah Vowell makes both readers and listeners laugh out loud with her wry, comic observations on everything from politics to pop culture.

Take the Cannoli is a moving and wickedly funny collection of personal stories stretching across the immense landscape of the American scene. Vowell tackles subjects such as identity, politics, religion, art, and history with a biting humor. She searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears. Vowell has an irresistible voice — caustic and sympathetic, insightful and double-edged — that has attracted a loyal following for her magazine writing and radio monologues on This American Life.

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Vowell takes herself seriously, but never too seriously—she reminds her readers that she is, for the most part, just like them. Yet, she takes universal experiences like waiting for a UPS delivery or learning to drive and turns them into interesting stories, twisting her daily life into witty, newsworthy tales. And when Vowell recalls feeling like a "living, breathing faux pas," teenagers and misfits everywhere know exactly how that feels.