Impossible Owls

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A globe-spanning, ambitious collection of essays from a captivating storyteller in narrative nonfiction. In his debut essay collection, Brian Phillips showcases his status as an iconoclastic journalist of the digital age, known for his meticulously reported essays that read like novels. The eight essays here—five from his time at Grantland and MTV, plus three new pieces—chronicle some of the modern world's most uncanny and spectacular oddities while delving deeper into themes of interconnectedness, historical consequences, myth, and the search for meaning. Phillips embarks on adventures, such as searching for tigers in India and unraveling a multigenerational mystery involving an oil tycoon and his complex family ties in his Oklahoma hometown. Throughout these explorations, Phillips's vibrant voice emerges as a character in its own right—full of humor, unexpected vulnerability, and a contagious enthusiasm for his subjects. Dogged and self-aware, he serves as an exhilarating guide to the confusion and wonder of today's world. If one collection marked the last great wave of New Journalism from the print era, this collection represents the first of the digital age.