Pulphead

I can't believe I haven't officially recommended Pulphead yet: it's one of my favorite books in recent years, and among the glitteriest in what is clearly becoming a golden age for essay collections. Writing about everything from Axl Rose and MTV's Real World to the 19th-century naturalist Constantine Rafinesque and (best of all) the late Southern writer Andrew Lytle, Sullivan makes every subject seem not a magazine assignment but a yearning quest for meaning, full of empathy and his unobtrusive but indelible style.