ROY BLOUNT JR. is the author of 19 previous books, most recently Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans. He is a panelist on NPRs Wait Wait...Dont Tell Me, a columnist for Oxford American, a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly, and president of the Authors Guild. TIME puts him squarely in the tradition of the great curmudgeons like H.L. Mencken and W.C. Fields. He lives in western Massachusetts.