A one-of-a-kind celebration of America's greatest comic strip - and the life lessons it can teach us - from a stellar array of writers and artists

Over the span of 50 years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture - hilarious, poignant, inimitable. Some 20 years after the last strip appeared, the characters Schulz brought to life in Peanuts continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself.

In The Peanuts Papers, 33 writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulz's deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture. These enchanting, affecting, and often quite personal essays show just how much Peanuts means to its many admirers - and the ways it invites us to ponder, in the words of Sarah Boxer, "how to survive and still be a decent human being" in an often bewildering world. Featuring essays, memoirs, poems, and two original comic strips, here is the ultimate listener's companion for every Peanuts fan.

Featuring:

Jill Bialosky

Lisa Birnbach

Sarah Boxer

Jennifer Finney Boylan

Ivan Brunetti

Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

Rich Cohen

Gerald Early

Umberto Eco

Jonathan Franzen

Ira Glass

Adam Gopnik

David Hajdu

Bruce Handy

David Kamp

Maxine Hong Kingston

Chuck Klosterman

Peter D. Kramer

Jonathan Lethem

Rick Moody

Ann Patchett

Kevin Powell

Joe Queenan

Nicole Rudick

George Saunders

Elissa Schappell

Janice Shapiro

Mona Simpson

Leslie Stein

Clifford Thompson

David L. Ulin

Chris Ware