Douglas Coupland takes his sparkling literary talent in a new direction with this crackling collection of takes on life and death in North America from his sweeping portrait of Grateful Dead culture to the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain and the middle class.

For years, Coupland's razor-sharp insights into what it means to be human in an age of technology have garnered the highest praise from fans and critics alike. At last, Coupland has assembled a wide variety of stories and personal "postcards" about the pivotal people and places that have defined our modern lives. Polaroids from the Dead is a skillful combination of stories, fact and fiction keen outtakes on life in the 20th century, exploring the recent past and a society obsessed with celebrity, crime and death. Princess Diana, Nicole Brown Simpson and Madonna are but some of the people scrutinized herein.

By turns hugely funny, savagely ironic, and poignantly searching, this collection has appeal for everyone cognizant of the first half of this decade and looking for navigation in the second.

Amazon.com Review
A collection of essays by Douglas Coupland, whose first novel Generation X received critical acclaim. In his mid-30s, Coupland writes about what it means to grow up and the realization that he is not young anymore. Essays include observations on parents his age at Grateful Dead concerts who seem intent on preserving a youthful reckless and carefree lifestyle at the expense of their children, to the "gristled leather bachelors" and "straw-permed sex androids from Planet 1971," to mourning his own sense of youthfulness as he revisits old haunts in his native Vancouver.