ARGONAUT BOOKS

Adam Gopnik embarks on a wildly creative inquiry into perhaps the oldest question: how do we learn a new skill? For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: how did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In 'The Real Work' - the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick - Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a...Read More