American Candy and Other Essays
Alexander Theroux
July 4, 2025
ISBN 9798218632632 / Hardcover / 538 pages / $32.99
ISBN 9798218703691 / Paperback / 538 pages / $26.99

In his long-awaited second essay collection, the brilliant and uncompromising Alexander Theroux turns his penetrating eye on everything from lobster fishing to "sissies," from the historian Samuel Eliot Morison to the fierce Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, and from the quirks of psychiatrists to the strange magnetism of Tijuana and the desolate majesty of Anza Borrego. Across twenty-three dazzling essays, Theroux reflects on his father, his time among Trappist monks, the eccentric souls of MIT, the treacheries of hate mail, and the sweet excesses of American candy. Written with trademark wit, erudition, and passion, American Candy is a rich and wide-ranging exploration of culture, character, and the human spirit by a twice National Book Award–nominated author at the height of his powers.