This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman" (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.

4-time 2013 Eisner Award Winner: Best Lettering, Best Publication, Best Writer/Artist and Best Graphic Album New York Times Book Review, Top 10 Books of the Year Time Magazine, Top Ten Fiction Books of the Year Publishers Weekly, Best Book of the Year Kirkus Reviews, Top 10 Fiction of 2012 Newsday, Top 10 Books of 2012 Entertainment Weekly, Gift Guide, A+ Washington Post, Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2012 Minneapolis Star Tribune, Best Books of the Year Cleveland Plain Dealer, Top 10 Fiction Books of the Year Amazon, Best Books of the Year/Comics Boing Boing, Best Graphic Novel of the Year Time Out New York, Best of 2012 Entertainment Weekly, Best Fiction of 2012 Everything you need to read the new graphic novel Building Stories: 14 distinctively discrete Books, Booklets, Magazines, Newspapers, and Pamphlets. With the increasing electronic incorporeality of existence, sometimes it’s reassuring—perhaps even necessary—to have something to hold on to. Thus within this colorful keepsake box the purchaser will find a fully-apportioned variety of reading material ready to address virtually any imaginable artistic or poetic taste, from the corrosive sarcasm of youth to the sickening earnestness of maturity—while discovering a protagonist wondering if she’ll ever move from the rented close quarters of lonely young adulthood to the mortgaged expanse of love and marriage. Whether you’re feeling alone by yourself or alone with someone else, this book is sure to sympathize with the crushing sense of life wasted, opportunities missed and creative dreams dashed which afflict the middle- and upper-class literary public (and which can return to them in somewhat damaged form during REM sleep). A pictographic listing of all 14 items (260 pages total) appears on the back, with suggestions made as to appropriate places to set down, forget or completely lose any number of its contents within the walls of an average well-appointed home. As seen in the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Building Stories collects a decade’s worth of work, with dozens of “never-before-published” pages (i.e., those deemed too obtuse, filthy or just plain incoherent to offer to a respectable periodical). Winner of the 2013 Eisner Awards for Best Graphic Album-New, Best Lettering, and Best Publication Design. Chris Ware is the winner of 2013 Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist for Building Stories. One of the New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2012