"One of the 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years"-SlateOn New Year's Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day-chosen completely at random-turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year's turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, prejudice, selflessness, coincidence, and startling moments of human connection, along with evocative foreshadowing of momentous events yet to come. Lives were lost. Lives were saved. Lives were altered in overwhelming ways. Many of these events never made it into the news; they were private dramas in the lives of private people. They were utterly compelling. One Day asks and answers the question of whether there is even such a thing as "ordinary" when we are talking about how we all lurch and stumble our way through the daily, daunting challenge of being human.

A SINGULARLY ORIGINAL IDEA: This book is an ode to journalism, and a marvelous celebration of the hard work journalists do to record human indecencies and triumphs for future generations of scholars, readers, and historians.DEEP AND IMPORTANT SUBJECTS: Weingarten carefully chooses the stories he examines, and offers a somber portrait of America, tackling themes such as the AIDS epidemic, racial inequality, poverty, and more.EXCEPTIONAL REVIEW COVERAGE FOR THE HARDCOVER: The 2019 hardcover receieved a multitude of positive reviews from national media outlets, and was included in "Best of Year" roundups on Slate, Parade, Washington Post, New York Post, and others.