“Immensely readable essays.…[Phillip Lopate] remains ‘a storyteller at heart’ who can liven up any subject with nimble anecdotes from his life.…Delightful” (The New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning collection of personal essays, distinguished author Phillip Lopate weaves together the colorful threads of a life well lived and takes us on an invigorating and thoughtful journey through memory, culture, parenthood, the trials of marriage both young and old, and an extraordinary look at New York’s storied past and present.

Lopate has long been considered one of our most important, groundbreaking essayists, and this newest collection has been widely celebrated as among his best. Portrait Inside My Head was listed in The New Yorker’s “Books to Watch Out For” and praised by The New York Times Book Review as “riveting [and] arresting,” with “sculptured scenes worthy of fiction.” Hailed as “America’s Montaigne” by the Baltimore City Paper and compared to “Henry Roth and early Saul Bellow” by the Christian Science Monitor, Lopate has an easy, conversational style that pushes his piercing insights to new depths, celebrating the life of the mind and illuminating memories and feelings both distant and immediate. The result is a charming and spirited new book from the undisputed master of the form.