Anybody Can Do Anything

Betty MacDonald (1907–1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children's books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. The Plague and I takes up Betty's delightful misadventures where The Egg and I left off. She continued chronicling her life story with memoirs Anybody Can Do Anything and finally Onions in the Stew. She lived on Vashon Island in Washington's Puget Sound.

"Improbably funny."- Steve Donoghue (Open Letters Monthly) "Betty MacDonald endured for me. This was because she was funny. No, that's not quite right. Betty MacDonald was comic. As I became a writer myself, I studied her, trying to figure out just how she did it. . . . What MacDonald achieves in Anybody Can Do Anything is . . . a finely observed journalistic record of her time. . . . The message that MacDonald had sent me is one of sufficiency. The homely, she says is more than enough. There's a clue, of course, right there in the title. It's been telling me since I was a girl, right up through the time I became a writer myself. Anybody can do anything. Even this. Even you."- Claire Dederer, author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses "Included in bestselling book 1,000 Books to Read before You Die: A Life-Changing List by Jim Mustich."

• 1. "Anybody Can Do Anything Especially Betty"2. What's a White Russian Got? 3. "Mining Is Easy" 4. "So Is Lumber" 5. "Nobody's Too Dull or Too Short for My Sister"6. "I Won't Dance, Don't Ask Me" 7. "Aren't We Going to Recognize Genius?" 8. "You Name It, Betty Can Do It" 9. "All the World's a Stage and by God Everybody in This Family Is Going to the Foreign Movies and Like Bach" 10. Nightschool 11. Bills! Bills! Bills! 12. Bundles for Bards 13. "Now Listen, Mother, It's Only a Fifteen Minute a Day Program" 14. "Let Nothing You Dismay" 15. "Just Like Flying" 16. "Hand Me That Straitjacket, Joe—the Government" 17. "Anybody Can Write Books"