Overview

An essential defense of the people the world loves to revile -- the loners -- yet without whom it would be lost The Buddha. Rene Descartes. Emily Dickinson. Greta Garbo. Bobby Fischer. J. D. Salinger: Loners, all -- along with as many as 25 percent of the world's population. Loners keep to themselves, and like it that way. Yet in the press, in films, in folklore, and nearly everywhere one looks, loners are tagged as losers and psychopaths, perverts and pity cases, ogres and mad bombers, elitists and wicked witches. Too often, loners buy into those messages and strive to change, making themselves miserable in the process by hiding their true nature -- and hiding from it. Loners as a group deserve to be reassessed -- to claim their rightful place, rather than be perceived as damaged goods that need to be ""fixed."" In Party of One Anneli Rufus--a prize-winning, critically acclaimed writer with talent to burn -- has crafted a morally urgent, historically compelling tour de force -- a long-overdue argument in defense of the loner, then and now. Marshalling a polymath's easy erudition to make her case, assembling evidence from every conceivable arena of culture as well as interviews with experts and loners worldwide and her own acutely calibrated analysis, Rufus rebuts the prevailing notion that aloneness is indistinguishable from loneliness, the fallacy that all of those who are alone don't want to be, and wouldn't be, if only they knew how.

Full Product Details

9781549176869

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Reviews

""A founding manifesto for an organization of self-contained people...A clever and spirited defense."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews""

A founding manifesto for an organization of self-contained people...A clever and spirited defense. -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

Anneli Rufus, a prize-winning, critically acclaimed writer, has published more than 500 feature articles in dozens of magazines and newspapers worldwide. She is the editor of the East Bay Express monthly literary supplement and the author of Magnificent Corpses, The World Holiday Book, and the co-author, with her husband, Kristan Lawson, of five travel guidebooks. She lives in Berkeley, California. Thérèse Plummer is an actor, award-winning voice-over artist, and counselor. She has won eighteen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has appeared in a variety of television and film roles. As a counselor for adolescents, she spent five years using drama therapy techniques in individual and group settings.

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