Adapted from "Zinsser on Friday," The American Scholar 's National Magazine Award–Winning Essay Series For nineteen months William Zinsser, author of the best-selling On Writing Well and many other books, wrote a weekly column for the website of the American Scholar magazine. This cornucopia was devoted mainly to culture and the arts, the craft of writing, and travels to remote places, along with the movies, American popular song, email, multitasking, baseball, Central Park, Tina Brown, Pauline Kael, Steve Martin, and other complications of modern life. Written with elegance and humor, these pieces are now collected in The Writer Who Stayed . "If you value vintage journalism of an old-fashioned vividness and integrity please, please read this book."— Wall Street Journal "Our 'endlessly supple' English language will, Zinsser says, 'do anything you ask it to do, if you treat it well. Try it and see.' Try him and see craftsmanship."—George F. Will "Zinsser—who, with On Writing Well , taught a whole lot of us how to set down a clean English sentence—last year won a National Magazine Award for his Friday web columns in The American Scholar . They're now in a collection that's completely charming, impeccably polished, and Strunk-and-White-ishly brief. He's the youngest 90-year-old you'll read this week."— New York Magazine William Zinsser is a lifelong journalist and nonfiction writer—he began his career on the New York Herald Tribune in 1946—and is also a teacher, best known for his book On Writing Well , a companion held in affection by three generations of writers, reporters, editors, teachers, and students. His 17 other books range from memoir ( Writing Places ) to travel ( American Places ), jazz ( Mitchell & Ruff ), American popular song ( Easy to Remember ), baseball ( Spring Training ) and the craft of writing ( Writing to Learn ). During the 1970s he was at Yale University, where he was master of Branford College and taught the influential nonfiction workshop that would start many writers and editors on their careers. He has taught at the New School, in New York, his hometown, and at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In spring 2012, 90-year-old Zinsser was the unexpected recipient of a National Magazine Award for digital commentary, having been nominated for a weekly series of columns contributed to the web version of the American Scholar. A number of those essays have been collected in this slim, though far from slight, tome. In his columns, Zinsser tackled the arts, technology, and travel, among other topics, often ruminating on the ways in which American society today is far poorer culturally than in the heyday decades of his youth. Yet Zinsser, an acolyte of E. B. White, is no Andy Rooney–style crank; he’s simply a gentle soul longing for gentler times, doing his best to hold true to values no longer valued. Not surprisingly for the author of the essential text On Writing Well, Zinsser is at his best when commenting on his chosen profession. Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours, he cautions students of the craft. For his part, Zinsser has decided to affirm. --Patty Wetli "If you value vintage journalism of an old-fashioned vividness and integrity please, please read this book."— Wall Street Journal "Our 'endlessly supple' English language will, Zinsser says, 'do anything you ask it to do, if you treat it well. Try it and see.' Try him and see craftsmanship."— George F. Will "Zinsser—who, with On Writing Well , taught a whole lot of us how to set down a clean English sentence—last year won a National Magazine Award for his Friday web columns in The American Scholar . They're now in a collection that's completely charming, impeccably polished, and Strunk-and-White-ishly brief. He's the youngest 90-year-old you'll read this week."— New York Magazine William Zinsser is a lifelong journalist and nonfiction writer—he began his career on the New York Herald Tribune in 1946—and is also a teacher, best known for his book On Writing Well , a companion held in affection by three generations of writers, reporters, editors, teachers, and students. His 17 other books range from memoir ( Writing Places ) to travel ( American Places ), jazz ( Mitchell & Ruff ), American popular song ( Easy to Remember ), baseball ( Spring Training ) and the craft of writing ( Writing to Learn ). During the 1970s he was at Yale University, where he was master of Branford College and taught the influential nonfiction workshop that would start many writers and editors on their careers. He has taught at the New School, in New York, his hometown, and at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.