The Moth [Paperback]

For the first time in print, celebrated storytelling phenomenon The Moth presents fifty spellbinding, soul-bearing stories selected from their extensive archive (fifteen-plus years and 10,000-plus stories strong). Inspired by friends telling stories on a porch, The Moth was born in small-town Georgia, garnered a cult following in New York City, and then rose to national acclaim with the wildly popular podcast and Peabody Award-winning weekly public radio showThe Moth Radio Hour.

Stories include: writer Malcolm Gladwell's wedding toast gone horribly awry; legendary rapper Darryl DMC McDaniels' obsession with a Sarah McLachlan song; poker champion Annie Duke's two-million-dollar hand; and A. E. Hotchner's death-defying stint in a bullring . . . with his friend Ernest Hemingway. Read about the panic of former Clinton Press Secretary Joe Lockhart when he misses Air Force One after a hard night of drinking in Moscow, and Dr. George Lombardi's fight to save Mother Teresa's life.

This will be a beloved read for existing Moth enthusiasts, fans of the featured storytellers, and all who savor well-told, hilarious, and heartbreaking stories. Passionate . . . brilliant, and quietly addictive. The London Guardian [In this book] the stories not only maintain their oral integrity but also take on new dimensions, allowing you to ponder a turn of events or to swirl the language around in your head without missing the next part of the story. David Vecsey, NYTimes.com The 6th Floor blog Burns, artistic director of the award-winning The Moth Radio Hour, frees stories whetted for a live audience onto the page, proving the richness of great storytelling: that one can gain as much as a member of an audience communally cringing, laughing and weeping, as a reader privately surrendering to the complicity of human experience. Publishers Weekly When I started to read the new collection 'The Moth: 50 True Stories,' [thlƒ½