The astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.     At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn''t entirely sure are in his head. After Belt''s father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire.      In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.

"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." —George Saunders "Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate’s wide open.” —Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book ReviewThe astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.     At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire.      In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.

Identity fraud happens to everyone. So what do you do when it's your turn? Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam filters, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But with the breaches of huge organizations like Target, AshleyMadison.com, JPMorgan Chase, Sony, Anthem, and even the US Office of Personnel Management, more than a billion personal records have already been stolen, and chances are good that you're already in harm's way. This doesn't mean there's no hope. Your identity may get stolen, but it doesn't have to be a life-changing event. Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, provides a method to help you keep hackers, phishers, and spammers from becoming your problem. Levin has seen every scam under the sun: fake companies selling "credit card insurance"; criminal, medical, and child identity theft; emails that promise untold riches for some personal information; catphishers, tax fraud, fake debt collectors who threaten you with legal action to confirm your account numbers; and much more.As Levin shows, these folks get a lot less scary if you see them coming. With a clearheaded, practical approach, Swiped is your guide to surviving the identity theft epidemic. Even if you've already become a victim, this strategic book will help you protect yourself, your identity, and your sanity.

Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam folders, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But the truth is, there are people out there - a lot of them - who treat stealing your identity as a full-time job.One such company is a nameless firm located in Russia, which has a trove of over a billion internet passwords. Another set up a website full of live streams of hacked web cameras, showing everything from people's offices and lobbies to the feeds from baby monitors. Even purchases made in person are still logged by retailers like Target, who are famously vulnerable to hackers. Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, is your guide to this brave new world. By telling memorable stories and extracting the relevant lessons, he offers a strategy for dealing with these risks. You may not be able to prevent identity theft, but you certainly shouldn't wait until it happens to take action. Levin's approach is defined by the three M's: minimizing risk, monitoring your identity, and managing the damage. The book is also organized around the different problems caused by identity theft: financial, criminal, medical, familial, etc., enabling readers to dip into the sections most relevant to them. Swiped is a practical, lively book that is essential to surviving the ever-changing world of online security. It is invaluable not only for preventing problems but helping cope when they arrive.

With searing honesty, tender prose and outrageous humour, Adam Levin takes us through the daily trials of living with Aids, travelling from promiscuity and dangerous denial, through the terrors of imminent mortality, to face the realities of his disease. But this book’s power lies not only in its value as a guide for coping with life-threatening illnesses, but in the rich quality of the narrative. Levin journeyed to remote, unimagined places to write The Wonder Safaris, but it is his Aidsafari – the frightening, internal journey that kept him on his sickbed for two years – that ultimately reveals his raw honesty, indomitable passion and remarkable insights about love, lostness and life, and how rarely it fails to surprise us.

With searing honesty, tender prose and outrageous humour, Adam Levin takes us through the daily trials of living with Aids, travelling from promiscuity and dangerous denial, through the terrors of imminent mortality, to face the realities of his disease. But this book’s power lies not only in its value as a guide for coping with life-threatening illnesses, but in the rich quality of the narrative. Levin journeyed to remote, unimagined places to write The Wonder Safaris, but it is his Aidsafari – the frightening, internal journey that kept him on his sickbed for two years – that ultimately reveals his raw honesty, indomitable passion and remarkable insights about love, lostness and life, and how rarely it fails to surprise us.

The astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.     At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn''t entirely sure are in his head. After Belt''s father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire.      In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.

"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." —George Saunders "Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate’s wide open.” —Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book ReviewThe astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.     At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire.      In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.

Identity fraud happens to everyone. So what do you do when it's your turn? Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam filters, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But with the breaches of huge organizations like Target, AshleyMadison.com, JPMorgan Chase, Sony, Anthem, and even the US Office of Personnel Management, more than a billion personal records have already been stolen, and chances are good that you're already in harm's way. This doesn't mean there's no hope. Your identity may get stolen, but it doesn't have to be a life-changing event. Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, provides a method to help you keep hackers, phishers, and spammers from becoming your problem. Levin has seen every scam under the sun: fake companies selling "credit card insurance"; criminal, medical, and child identity theft; emails that promise untold riches for some personal information; catphishers, tax fraud, fake debt collectors who threaten you with legal action to confirm your account numbers; and much more.As Levin shows, these folks get a lot less scary if you see them coming. With a clearheaded, practical approach, Swiped is your guide to surviving the identity theft epidemic. Even if you've already become a victim, this strategic book will help you protect yourself, your identity, and your sanity.

Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam folders, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But the truth is, there are people out there - a lot of them - who treat stealing your identity as a full-time job.One such company is a nameless firm located in Russia, which has a trove of over a billion internet passwords. Another set up a website full of live streams of hacked web cameras, showing everything from people's offices and lobbies to the feeds from baby monitors. Even purchases made in person are still logged by retailers like Target, who are famously vulnerable to hackers. Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, is your guide to this brave new world. By telling memorable stories and extracting the relevant lessons, he offers a strategy for dealing with these risks. You may not be able to prevent identity theft, but you certainly shouldn't wait until it happens to take action. Levin's approach is defined by the three M's: minimizing risk, monitoring your identity, and managing the damage. The book is also organized around the different problems caused by identity theft: financial, criminal, medical, familial, etc., enabling readers to dip into the sections most relevant to them. Swiped is a practical, lively book that is essential to surviving the ever-changing world of online security. It is invaluable not only for preventing problems but helping cope when they arrive.

With searing honesty, tender prose and outrageous humour, Adam Levin takes us through the daily trials of living with Aids, travelling from promiscuity and dangerous denial, through the terrors of imminent mortality, to face the realities of his disease. But this book’s power lies not only in its value as a guide for coping with life-threatening illnesses, but in the rich quality of the narrative. Levin journeyed to remote, unimagined places to write The Wonder Safaris, but it is his Aidsafari – the frightening, internal journey that kept him on his sickbed for two years – that ultimately reveals his raw honesty, indomitable passion and remarkable insights about love, lostness and life, and how rarely it fails to surprise us.

With searing honesty, tender prose and outrageous humour, Adam Levin takes us through the daily trials of living with Aids, travelling from promiscuity and dangerous denial, through the terrors of imminent mortality, to face the realities of his disease. But this book’s power lies not only in its value as a guide for coping with life-threatening illnesses, but in the rich quality of the narrative. Levin journeyed to remote, unimagined places to write The Wonder Safaris, but it is his Aidsafari – the frightening, internal journey that kept him on his sickbed for two years – that ultimately reveals his raw honesty, indomitable passion and remarkable insights about love, lostness and life, and how rarely it fails to surprise us.