Too soon to tell / Calvin Trillin

Introduction -- Family business -- A new arrival -- Return of the Rubes -- Worms turning -- Talk about ugly? -- Special dish -- Agents, agents everywhere -- Time and tide -- Iowa on my mind -- Believable history -- Sound policy -- Stargazing -- Adventurees in the book game -- The Alice tax -- Check him out -- Women, women -- Lip-synching -- Truth is stranger -- A traditional family -- Gecko redux -- Dog-bark duet -- Keeping up with geography -- Frog theories -- Mass exit -- Rock threat subsides -- Naming the German baby -- The past and the future -- Go to your room -- International chigger alert -- Chinese golf -- Please stop -- Errands -- Polite society -- Who was first? -- I'm O.K., I'm not O.K. -- Planted questions -- Counting my blessings -- Too old -- Speak softly -- Orlando when it sizzles -- A visit from Jean-Michel -- Blues blues -- Don't mention it -- Bad language -- Searching for the elite -- Merger -- Women and clubs -- Folktale, for real -- The right to bear chain saws -- New worries -- Broken English. (Cont'd) Taxing the Queen -- Networking for fun and profit -- Just plain Bill -- Smoking incorrectly -- Presidential symbols -- Seat belts for dogs -- Capital goobers -- Tabloid in the tabloids -- Contemplating the zoo -- Steven the turtle -- Tough enough -- Hurt feelings -- In defense of sleeping -- Doubly generous -- Alas, poor Willy -- Little-known facts -- New professor -- The hot stuff cure -- Unmasked -- A Christmas shopping tale -- Pacific insults -- Networkers triumphant -- Exchanging information -- Unplugged -- Out of style -- Dangerous machines -- Movie reality -- Din! Din! Din! -- Beware of pickpockets -- Eye of the beholder -- Brutal attack on Barney -- Nerds, unvanished -- Hazardous dining -- Embarrassment of riches -- Questions about Prince Charles -- Jeff again -- The piping plover -- So, Nu, Dr. Freud -- Hat trick -- Sign writing -- Video talk -- What's the good word? -- Afterword.

Every few years, Trillin gathers a bunch of his syndicated columns on anything and everything and converts them into a book. This is his fifth such collection. In this book, readers will discover precisely what they would expect from past acquaintance: wit, spiced with a tang of tolerant cynicism; a chuckly sort of humor rather than a guffawing one; a purged prose in which the inessential is resolutely excluded; and little in the way of subject matter to which he will not give at least a flying salute.