Word For Word

Description for WORD FOR WORD by Andrew A Rooney:

"A writer's greatest pleasure is revealing to people things they knew, but did not know they knew." writes Andy Rooney. For over two decades, in hour and half-hour specials, his award-winning 60 Minutes pieces, his widely syndicated newspaper columns and enduringly popular books, Andy Rooney has been writing about the annoyances, pleasures, frustrations and paradoxes that affect us all; about what drives us crazy, what brings us joy and what makes us human.

With wit, rue and just plain common sense, he makes us care about everyday things by looking at them aslant, lifting them to the level of ideas, turning the ordinary into something extraordinary.

And in WORD FOR WORD, his brand-new book, he does it again. Representing the very finest of his newspaper essays from the last two years, the 130 pieces in his new book offer delightfully independent commentaries on everything from psychiatrists, diets and doctors to natural foods ("Spaghetti colored green with a little spinach is 'natural'?"), sweepstakes, spies, forgetfulness, the fifty-first state, politics, repairmen (No matter what job you want done, things are always worse than you thought"), attorneys, "amateur" athletics, grandfatherhood and gardening (There are few things in life more satisfying than saving money by growing your own vegetables. Last night we had three home-grown zucchini for dinner. I estimate they cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $371.49 each."

In all, it is a book of pure delight, continuing evidence that, in the words of Jim Lehrer, "nobody does what he does better than Andy Rooney. He tells us things about ourselves that we'd probably just as soon not hear. But he does it in a way that's OK. He's one of us. His soap is slippery, too; his mailbox if full of junk mail, too. He understands. He's Andy Rooney. He's our friend."