Headshots: Profiles, Essays, and Reflections

Pulitzer winner Wright (The Human Scale) surveys his own wide-ranging journalistic career in this enticing collection of pieces from the New Yorker, Texas Monthly, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. The earliest, from 1980, is a profile of an aging Texas baseball player; the most recent, from 2024, is a remembrance of Jimmy Carter. In between, the book touches on the space program, Jonestown, and literary heavyweights Richard Brautigan and Denis Johnson, among other diverse subjects, showing off the writer’s extraordinary versatility. Wright can be hard-boiled—“there was scarcely anything left after the .44 magnum and five weeks of maggots had done their work,” he writes of the aftermath of Brautigan’s suicide—but he’s also a master of the illuminating character detail; consider the volumes communicated about the couple’s long relationship when former first lady Rosalynn Carter expresses surprise that her husband reads the New Yorker (“‘I read it every week!’ he protested”). Readers occasionally get more personal glimpses of the reporter, especially in “No City Limits,” Wright’s lyrical paean to Austin, Tex., his longtime home, and in his introduction, where he reflects on his writing process. “What rounds out a character,” Wright explains, “is his capacity for surprise,” and in that sense, it’s Wright himself who emerges as the fascinating protagonist of this book. These are charming, empathetic dispatches from a probing writer who always allows himself space for astonishment. (Aug.)