The Catastrophe Hour - by Meghan Daum (Paperback)

About the Book

"Written between 2016 and 2023, these essays are classic Daum, showcasing the author's wit, her intellect, and her uncanny ability to throw new light on even the most ubiquitous of subjects. Delving into divorce, dating, music, friendship, beauty, aging, death and money, Daum's unflinching honesty and exacting observations secure her reputation as one of our most important and enduring essayists."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Unspeakable and The Problem with Everything comes a new collection of unputdownable essays.

"For the last five or six years, on many afternoons around 4 or 5 p.m., I've been overcome with the sensation that my life is effectively over. Note the personal touch here. This is not a sensation of the world ending, which has been in vogue for quite some time now, and maybe for good reason. It's a distinct feeling of being at the end of my days. My time, while technically not 'up, ' is disappearing in the rearview mirror. The fact that this feeling of ambient doom tends to coincide with the blue-tinged, pre-gloaming light of the late afternoon lends to the whole thing a cosmic beauty, as devastating as it is awe-inspiring. As such, I've dubbed this the catastrophe hour."

Written between 2016 and 2023, these essays are classic Daum, showcasing the author's wit, her intellect, and her uncanny ability to throw new light on even the most ubiquitous of subjects. Delving into divorce, dating, music, friendship, beauty, aging, death and money, Daum's unflinching honesty and exacting observations secure her reputation as one of our most important and enduring essayists.

Review Quotes

"A brilliant, incisive essayist." --The New York Times Book Review

"A master of the bold admission."--Los Angeles Times

Essayist, novelist, and memoirist Daum, host of the Unspeakable podcast, gathers 14 acerbic, intimate essays written between 2016 and 2024 on a variety of themes, including marriage and divorce, childlessness and motherhood, friendship and music.....Sharp, deft commentary." -- Kirkus Reviews

"In these forthright pieces, Daum meditates on the vagaries of midlife." --Publishers Weekly

"Daum is the rare contemporary writer who simply tells the truth in the unvarnished manner that inevitably hits the hardest."--Alex Perez, Washington Examiner

"For 30 years, Daum has been an incisive chronicler of her life and times. Now, in an age that feels like an unraveling, in this book she puts her finger on both her unique experience and our collective one... This book is a beautiful object, and so packable it can fit in a purse. What a delight it would be this summer to pull it out and engage in that now-radical act of reading a book in public. " --Emily Yoffe, The Free Press Guide to Summer Reading

About the Author

Meghan Daum is the author of six books, most recently The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars, a New York Times Notable Book of 2019. Her collection of original essays, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion, won the 2015 Pen Center USA Award for creative nonfiction, and she has been the recipient of fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.