Tad Friend's family is nothing if not illustrious: his father was president of SwarthmoreCollege, and at Smith his mother came in second in a poetry contest judged by W.H. Auden--to Sylvia Plath. For centuries, Wasps like his ancestors dominated American life. But then, in the '60s, their fortunes began to fall. As a young man, Tad noticed that his family tree, for all its glories, was full of alcoholics, depressives, and reckless eccentrics. Yet his identity had already been shaped by the family's age-old traditions and expectations. Part memoir, part family history, andpart cultural study of the long swoon of the American Wasp, "Cheerful Money" is a captivating examination of a cultural crack-up and a man trying to escape its wreckage.

Find yourself in the midst of a heated battle over a sitcom laugh track. Learn to get away with spectacular crimes. Get lost with the reindeer people in the mountains of Mongolia.
In Lost in Mongolia a collection of Tad Friend's most original, witty, and wide-ranging articles and essays from "The New Yorker, Esquire, " and "Outside" we are taken on a cultural tour of global proportions. Friend reports from the entertainment mecca of Hollywood on topics that range from the life and death of River Phoenix to the widespread plagiarism of movie ideas, to why celebrity profiles are always dreadful. He critiques the larger American culture with articles such as "White Trash Nation," " In Praise of Middlebrow, " and a brief rumination on what it means when your girlfriend steals and wears your favorite shirt. Readers will also journey to foreign lands and American outposts, as Friend goes on the trail of the Marcos dynasty in the Philippines, is harassed in Morocco, and digs up buried treasure in Sun Valley.
Lost in Mongolia is a one-of-a-kind collection from a refreshingly candid and well-traveled journalist.