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One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten explores the events of a random day in U.S. history, offering a diorama of American life that illuminates all that has changed--and all that hasn't--in the past three decades.
December 28, 1986. It was a Sunday--Ronald Reagan was president, Oliver Stone's Platoon was lighting up movie screens across the country, and readers were terrified by Stephen King's latest novel, It. It is also the date that Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist, literally pulled out of a hat, selecting the month, day, and year at random. Compared to other dates seared in our collective memory, that was a quiet Sunday between Christmas and the New Year. But as Weingarten asks, Is there really such a thing as an ordinary day?
In One Day, what was a seemingly insignificant day in American history has been transformed into a riveting, poignant collection about the quiet dramas that were entered into the public record but escaped public memory. Through a combination of crowdsourced[KJ1] stories and years of research, Weingarten revisits the lives of December 28's stories, showing how an arbitrarily chosen twenty-four hours can act as a herald for the momentous events that would later make history. He finds that racial and economic disparity and the mistreatment of minority groups are deep veins, running through even the quietest days in American history. And he shows that small dramas and kindnesses in the unremarkable news items can illuminate the often surprising moments of human connection.
December 28, 1986. It was a Sunday--Ronald Reagan was president, Oliver Stone's Platoon was lighting up movie screens across the country, and readers were terrified by Stephen King's latest novel, It. It is also the date that Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist, literally pulled out of a hat, selecting the month, day, and year at random. Compared to other dates seared in our collective memory, that was a quiet Sunday between Christmas and the New Year. But as Weingarten asks, Is there really such a thing as an ordinary day?
In One Day, what was a seemingly insignificant day in American history has been transformed into a riveting, poignant collection about the quiet dramas that were entered into the public record but escaped public memory. Through a combination of crowdsourced[KJ1] stories and years of research, Weingarten revisits the lives of December 28's stories, showing how an arbitrarily chosen twenty-four hours can act as a herald for the momentous events that would later make history. He finds that racial and economic disparity and the mistreatment of minority groups are deep veins, running through even the quietest days in American history. And he shows that small dramas and kindnesses in the unremarkable news items can illuminate the often surprising moments of human connection.
384 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 22, 2019
428 people are currently reading
9736 people want to read
About the author
Gene Weingarten
15 books119 followersA Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and humorist for the Washington Post and author of a number of books.
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May 17, 2019Very excited to read One Day. My husband and I have a book chapter devoted to our chance, accidental meeting while I was on a date with another man on Sunday, December 28, 1986. We announced our engagement after two dates in two days. Yes, we're still together 33 years later...
July 5, 2020
There is no such thing as an ordinary life. Mark Twain
It seems there’s no such thing as an ordinary day, either. This book is full of captivating stories, many which spin out into multiple dramas, events that changed the course of lives, some that ended tragically, all which made me ponder what at first seems like the mundane, but is actually miraculous, the sublimity of every moment.
It’s a clever concept, one which is best left for the author to explain…
"Like all origin stories involving writers, this one involves desperation. My editor and I were bouncing ideas off each other for books, and I wondered what happened on May 17, 1957. He said that’s a good idea, try to find a single random day, the most irreducible unit of human experience really, midnight to midnight, and examine the idea of whether there’s even such a thing as an ordinary day. Or does every day encompass the full human condition?
As it turns out, when they asked three strangers to pull names out of a hat, they ended up with a Sunday, the worst news day of the week, with a day between Christmas and New Year’s, the worst news week of the year and in what they deemed to be an unremarkable year. December 28, 1986.
And yet, the author who believes there’s a story in everything, provides us with 18 unconnected stories that go beyond the facts and players. The stories range from the simple, a problematic weather vane; to the heroic, two different men in two different towns try to save children from a fire; to the tragic and horrifying, homicide and its aftermath. There are jubilant stories and heart-wrenching ones, a few famous folks, but mostly just a lot of people like us or those we know.
This book took six years to complete and I can understand why. They are not merely human interest stories, they dig deep and wide, provoke thoughtful consideration and, in the end, made me feel the significance of every day, every choice and all that makes up a life. A string of ordinary days and every day moments that lead to a whole. What the author calls ‘the wonder of being.’
We are all serving time on death row; only the length of our stay is indeterminate. Dead people, walking. If our lives are to be fulfilling, we must be grateful for the experience alone.
Amen to that, Gene! I highly recommend this book for its storytelling, but most of all for the far reaching goal of trying to explain ‘the concept of a day, the soul of it’ and to answer the question of whether a day can encompass the full human condition. I’ll leave it up to you to decide once you read the book.
It seems there’s no such thing as an ordinary day, either. This book is full of captivating stories, many which spin out into multiple dramas, events that changed the course of lives, some that ended tragically, all which made me ponder what at first seems like the mundane, but is actually miraculous, the sublimity of every moment.
It’s a clever concept, one which is best left for the author to explain…
"Like all origin stories involving writers, this one involves desperation. My editor and I were bouncing ideas off each other for books, and I wondered what happened on May 17, 1957. He said that’s a good idea, try to find a single random day, the most irreducible unit of human experience really, midnight to midnight, and examine the idea of whether there’s even such a thing as an ordinary day. Or does every day encompass the full human condition?
As it turns out, when they asked three strangers to pull names out of a hat, they ended up with a Sunday, the worst news day of the week, with a day between Christmas and New Year’s, the worst news week of the year and in what they deemed to be an unremarkable year. December 28, 1986.
And yet, the author who believes there’s a story in everything, provides us with 18 unconnected stories that go beyond the facts and players. The stories range from the simple, a problematic weather vane; to the heroic, two different men in two different towns try to save children from a fire; to the tragic and horrifying, homicide and its aftermath. There are jubilant stories and heart-wrenching ones, a few famous folks, but mostly just a lot of people like us or those we know.
This book took six years to complete and I can understand why. They are not merely human interest stories, they dig deep and wide, provoke thoughtful consideration and, in the end, made me feel the significance of every day, every choice and all that makes up a life. A string of ordinary days and every day moments that lead to a whole. What the author calls ‘the wonder of being.’
We are all serving time on death row; only the length of our stay is indeterminate. Dead people, walking. If our lives are to be fulfilling, we must be grateful for the experience alone.
Amen to that, Gene! I highly recommend this book for its storytelling, but most of all for the far reaching goal of trying to explain ‘the concept of a day, the soul of it’ and to answer the question of whether a day can encompass the full human condition. I’ll leave it up to you to decide once you read the book.
December 18, 2020
I remember being intrigued by this book by reading a very short review of it in the Briefly Noted section of The New Yorker. I clipped out the review and now I lost it…after I write this review I’ll go look and see what it said. It had to be at least semi-positive…otherwise I wouldn’t have read this. But after reading the book, I was more annoyed and can only give it 2 stars. Perhaps not fair to the author, and after all he was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize as a journalist for the Washington Post…but I was expecting something different. I was expecting a slice-of-life book…here is what happened to various people on December 28, 1986. That is the date he and his editor Tom Shroder decided on…to comb through newspaper articles in the US and pick stories that intrigued Weingarten. In the inner liner of the dustjacket we are told it took 6 years for Weingarten to research and to write the book.
There were too many malevolent or “bad” stories that were told in this book to my liking. So it wasn’t my cup of tea. Whether it might be your cup of tea, for you to decide. I can break down the book into chapters and make a few observations now and then…one observation is that the book moves forward in time on December 28 from immediately after midnight to late in the night of that date (Dec. 28). Each point in time chosen is a chapter in the book. You do not have to read in the order presented — you can choose a time in the middle of the day of you want and go hither and thither and it won’t matter. I look upon the book as a series of vignettes…things that happened in real life (not stories) but the vignettes are not connected, and for you to understand one vignettes in the evening of the 28th you don’t have to know anything about the preceding times/vignettes.
Actually I know what I’m going to do…. (this review is fluid!)…I am going to rate the vignettes with a spare comment here and there, Let us begin! 😎
• 12:01 am — Charlottesville, Virginia —— A medical story and a chilling murder, if you like to read about what really goes on in open heart surgery this is the vignette for you! 4 stars.
• 3:02 am — Falls City, Nebraska ——I think at this point I was starting to say to myself this is not a slice-of-life book I guess. A man robs banks and tries to save two children in a house fire. 2.5 stars.
• 5:45 am — Bartlett, Tennessee —— A mother is good at video games. 2.5 stars.
• 6:35 am — San Diego, California —— My thoughts as I am reading this: “I feel terrible for the people’s deaths. Why is he dwelling on people getting murdered, or “baked” in a house fire? These are extraordinary events in one day?? It’s all terrible stuff except for the first story. 2 stars.
• 6:40 am — Flagstaff, Arizona —— another sad story about a marriage that does not work out. 1.5 stars.
• 8:15 am — Cedar Rapids, Iowa — A vignette about a transexual and the life he led before and after coming out. 4.5 stars.
• 10:50 am — Dallas, Texas —— 5 stars awarded to the protagonist of this vignette.
• 12:05 pm — Queens, New York City — — 2.5 stars. A story about the mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, and how his star was fading because of race relations gone south.
• 1:58 pm — Miami, Florida — — crime in Miami brought on by crack cocaine and a parade. 2 stars.
• 2:10 pm — Takoma Park, Maryland —— sad vignette involving AIDS…and the lack of compassion a lot of Americans showed towards men who were felled by the virus. 3.5 stars
• 4:25 pm — Matlock, Washington —— Helicopter crashing among other potentially disastrous things. Pretty amazing that protagonist lived to tell the tale. 3 stars.
• 5:05 pm — Washington, D.C. —— A vignette about a Washington Redskins game and instant replay. 3 stars
• 6:10 pm — Winslow, Indiana —— You want another murder mystery? Coming right up! 2 stars. (only because I am sick and tired of murders in this book!)
• 6:15 pm — Montego Bay, Jamaica —— Why is this in the collection? Since when did Jamaica become a state? 2.5 stars.
• 7:45 pm — JFK Airport, New York City —— A group of people who came from Russia to America in hopes for a better life decide to go back to Russia. 2.5 stars.
• 8:35 pm — Great Neck, Long Island —— A couple stay alive, and in love, despite everything. 3.5 stars.
• 11:55 pm — Oakland, California ——A vignette about Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. 2 stars.
I am glad that day was over. 😕
Notes:
• Words I had to look up: “They hondled”, Hondle = as to bargain ; “At the perigree of my reporting”, Perigree= the point in the orbit of the moon or a satellite at which it is nearest to the earth; “Gyre of history”, gyre=whirl or gyrate.
• I wonder how long it took for the author to think this up. I sort of found it gross. It was in the Acknowledgement section, and he wanted to give a shout-out to his editor, tom Shroder: “He has been my principal editor at the Post and has edited most of my books. He has the sensitivity of a corduroy condom.” 😑
Reviews:
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• At this link are a number of one-three liners from newspaper or literary magazine or individual’s reviews (e.g., Peter Segal from NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me!): https://www.booktopia.com.au/one-day-...
Post-script: I just read the review in The New Yorker’s Briefly Noted section (November 11, 2019) and it is not at all indicative of the tenor of this book, and it is no wonder I was intrigued by the book (i.e., I feel justified in my choosing this book based on what is said here…but this assessment I feel was not accurate…boo-hiss!): This absorbing snapshot of America draws on more than five hundred interviews about a randomly chosen day in 1986, a quiet Sunday just after Christmas. A nursing student goes in for a heart transplant; two fishing buddies survive a helicopter crash; a girl defies her religious mother to play Nintendo. Weingarten relates these events, and the stumbles and joys of dozens of other people, with compassion and humor.
There were too many malevolent or “bad” stories that were told in this book to my liking. So it wasn’t my cup of tea. Whether it might be your cup of tea, for you to decide. I can break down the book into chapters and make a few observations now and then…one observation is that the book moves forward in time on December 28 from immediately after midnight to late in the night of that date (Dec. 28). Each point in time chosen is a chapter in the book. You do not have to read in the order presented — you can choose a time in the middle of the day of you want and go hither and thither and it won’t matter. I look upon the book as a series of vignettes…things that happened in real life (not stories) but the vignettes are not connected, and for you to understand one vignettes in the evening of the 28th you don’t have to know anything about the preceding times/vignettes.
Actually I know what I’m going to do…. (this review is fluid!)…I am going to rate the vignettes with a spare comment here and there, Let us begin! 😎
• 12:01 am — Charlottesville, Virginia —— A medical story and a chilling murder, if you like to read about what really goes on in open heart surgery this is the vignette for you! 4 stars.
• 3:02 am — Falls City, Nebraska ——I think at this point I was starting to say to myself this is not a slice-of-life book I guess. A man robs banks and tries to save two children in a house fire. 2.5 stars.
• 5:45 am — Bartlett, Tennessee —— A mother is good at video games. 2.5 stars.
• 6:35 am — San Diego, California —— My thoughts as I am reading this: “I feel terrible for the people’s deaths. Why is he dwelling on people getting murdered, or “baked” in a house fire? These are extraordinary events in one day?? It’s all terrible stuff except for the first story. 2 stars.
• 6:40 am — Flagstaff, Arizona —— another sad story about a marriage that does not work out. 1.5 stars.
• 8:15 am — Cedar Rapids, Iowa — A vignette about a transexual and the life he led before and after coming out. 4.5 stars.
• 10:50 am — Dallas, Texas —— 5 stars awarded to the protagonist of this vignette.
• 12:05 pm — Queens, New York City — — 2.5 stars. A story about the mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, and how his star was fading because of race relations gone south.
• 1:58 pm — Miami, Florida — — crime in Miami brought on by crack cocaine and a parade. 2 stars.
• 2:10 pm — Takoma Park, Maryland —— sad vignette involving AIDS…and the lack of compassion a lot of Americans showed towards men who were felled by the virus. 3.5 stars
• 4:25 pm — Matlock, Washington —— Helicopter crashing among other potentially disastrous things. Pretty amazing that protagonist lived to tell the tale. 3 stars.
• 5:05 pm — Washington, D.C. —— A vignette about a Washington Redskins game and instant replay. 3 stars
• 6:10 pm — Winslow, Indiana —— You want another murder mystery? Coming right up! 2 stars. (only because I am sick and tired of murders in this book!)
• 6:15 pm — Montego Bay, Jamaica —— Why is this in the collection? Since when did Jamaica become a state? 2.5 stars.
• 7:45 pm — JFK Airport, New York City —— A group of people who came from Russia to America in hopes for a better life decide to go back to Russia. 2.5 stars.
• 8:35 pm — Great Neck, Long Island —— A couple stay alive, and in love, despite everything. 3.5 stars.
• 11:55 pm — Oakland, California ——A vignette about Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. 2 stars.
I am glad that day was over. 😕
Notes:
• Words I had to look up: “They hondled”, Hondle = as to bargain ; “At the perigree of my reporting”, Perigree= the point in the orbit of the moon or a satellite at which it is nearest to the earth; “Gyre of history”, gyre=whirl or gyrate.
• I wonder how long it took for the author to think this up. I sort of found it gross. It was in the Acknowledgement section, and he wanted to give a shout-out to his editor, tom Shroder: “He has been my principal editor at the Post and has edited most of my books. He has the sensitivity of a corduroy condom.” 😑
Reviews:
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• At this link are a number of one-three liners from newspaper or literary magazine or individual’s reviews (e.g., Peter Segal from NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me!): https://www.booktopia.com.au/one-day-...
Post-script: I just read the review in The New Yorker’s Briefly Noted section (November 11, 2019) and it is not at all indicative of the tenor of this book, and it is no wonder I was intrigued by the book (i.e., I feel justified in my choosing this book based on what is said here…but this assessment I feel was not accurate…boo-hiss!): This absorbing snapshot of America draws on more than five hundred interviews about a randomly chosen day in 1986, a quiet Sunday just after Christmas. A nursing student goes in for a heart transplant; two fishing buddies survive a helicopter crash; a girl defies her religious mother to play Nintendo. Weingarten relates these events, and the stumbles and joys of dozens of other people, with compassion and humor.
December 16, 2019
Gene Weingarten is a master storyteller, so this book of stories—researched on a day picked out of a hat—is pure pleasure for the reader. Every moment contains a full story of the human condition, according to Weingarten, and it's just a matter of finding it and fleshing it out. How he does this is his art and brilliant writer's technique and understanding of mechanics.
I first read Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize winning The Fiddler in the Subway where his introduction serves as a master class for any writer in search of a teacher.
One Day features the master at work. Thank you, Mr. Weingarten!
I first read Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize winning The Fiddler in the Subway where his introduction serves as a master class for any writer in search of a teacher.
One Day features the master at work. Thank you, Mr. Weingarten!
November 20, 2019
It's hard to beat this premise – the history of one day in recent American history, chosen through three random draws out of a hat (month, date and year) – and it's hard to beat the way Gene Weingarten executes it.
The day – December 28, 1986 – is almost perfectly nondescript, as well as perfectly situated between the two worlds bifurcated by the rise of the personal computer and internet. It also helps that it takes place in the year I turned 4 years old, when I was too yoiung to remember but old enough to be influenced by the culture this book explores.
And what a culture! The rise of AIDS, the seething-yet-ignored racism, the big hair, the last vestiges of kids doing whatever the hell they wanted until dinner, the days when creepers and killers could operate without international media coverage, and everyday men and women living their lives unaware of how their very way of being would be upended in less than a decade by enormous technological forces unleashed by young men with names like Gates and Jobs just then coming into their own.
Weingarten distills all of this into what amounts to 18 short stories – each a separate chronicle not only of what happened at a specific time that day, but also the events leading up to it and spiraling away from it. In some cases, that involves issues as complicated as race, AIDS and politics; in others, it's as simple as a grieving father's activism or a conflicted man's decision to change his sex.
His writing style is what you'd expect from an award-winning newspaper columnist. It's the easygoing, almost jocular style of the human interest writer. He knows how to spin a yarn, in other words, and how to keep the reader guessing until the last minute. That works almost all of the time; sometimes, the story is really so mundane that it can't support the tension Weingarten attempts to create, and sometimes the story is so serious and engrossing that Weingarten's informality is distracting.
But overall, it's nearly perfect; any book whose basis is drawn out of a hat can't take itself too seriously, even if it's the product of six years of research. Weingarten seems to understand that, and as a result, he creates a work that's greater than the sum of its parts: a beautiful collection of stories that serve as a snapshot of an era long vanished.
The day – December 28, 1986 – is almost perfectly nondescript, as well as perfectly situated between the two worlds bifurcated by the rise of the personal computer and internet. It also helps that it takes place in the year I turned 4 years old, when I was too yoiung to remember but old enough to be influenced by the culture this book explores.
And what a culture! The rise of AIDS, the seething-yet-ignored racism, the big hair, the last vestiges of kids doing whatever the hell they wanted until dinner, the days when creepers and killers could operate without international media coverage, and everyday men and women living their lives unaware of how their very way of being would be upended in less than a decade by enormous technological forces unleashed by young men with names like Gates and Jobs just then coming into their own.
Weingarten distills all of this into what amounts to 18 short stories – each a separate chronicle not only of what happened at a specific time that day, but also the events leading up to it and spiraling away from it. In some cases, that involves issues as complicated as race, AIDS and politics; in others, it's as simple as a grieving father's activism or a conflicted man's decision to change his sex.
His writing style is what you'd expect from an award-winning newspaper columnist. It's the easygoing, almost jocular style of the human interest writer. He knows how to spin a yarn, in other words, and how to keep the reader guessing until the last minute. That works almost all of the time; sometimes, the story is really so mundane that it can't support the tension Weingarten attempts to create, and sometimes the story is so serious and engrossing that Weingarten's informality is distracting.
But overall, it's nearly perfect; any book whose basis is drawn out of a hat can't take itself too seriously, even if it's the product of six years of research. Weingarten seems to understand that, and as a result, he creates a work that's greater than the sum of its parts: a beautiful collection of stories that serve as a snapshot of an era long vanished.
December 21, 2019
I was horrified at this man’s depiction of domestic violence. Not one but TWO stories centered around horrible domestic violence both end in calling it a “love story” or just a case of a broken heart. I have so many things I want to say to this writer! All of the stories in this book could have been captivating but all I can think of is the two stories that read as above.
October 22, 2019
Thank you to Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
DNF @ 28%. I really hate to say it, but I had to put this down. The idea was so great, but the execution was lacking.
At first, I was really enjoying the writing, as it discussed a lot of topics that I'm currently learning about in school and I found that to be especially engaging. However, once that part ended I was left with disappointment.
Each story became more boring than the previous (the first one was very strong), and while I applaud the author for putting as much time and effort into this book as he did, I don't applaud him for the oversexualized descriptions of women and some of the commentary against the validity of cultural appropriation.
After both of those offenses, I decided that I couldn't continue. It's truly a shame, as I was very excited about the release of this book. You win some, you lose some, I suppose.
DNF @ 28%. I really hate to say it, but I had to put this down. The idea was so great, but the execution was lacking.
At first, I was really enjoying the writing, as it discussed a lot of topics that I'm currently learning about in school and I found that to be especially engaging. However, once that part ended I was left with disappointment.
Each story became more boring than the previous (the first one was very strong), and while I applaud the author for putting as much time and effort into this book as he did, I don't applaud him for the oversexualized descriptions of women and some of the commentary against the validity of cultural appropriation.
After both of those offenses, I decided that I couldn't continue. It's truly a shame, as I was very excited about the release of this book. You win some, you lose some, I suppose.
December 29, 2019
So hard to know how to rate this book. Really stellar concept, but the execution can't live up to it. A few of the stories were really interesting and well-written. Many were kind of boring. Many were written with weird (1980s-style?) sexism and judgments from the author.
October 10, 2019
Tip: This spectacular work of reporting is not a true-crime book per se, but true crime readers are going to love it.
February 24, 2020
There was some merit to this book. It was an interesting concept and well researched. However, I was disgusted with the discussions of domestic violence. A man who shot his ex-girlfriend in the head five times was described as “loving her too hard.” Another man who viciously tortured his wife for over an hour, sending her to the hospital in critical condition, was described as being part of a “love story,” because his wife decided to get back together with him eventually. His controlling and abusive behavior prior to the beating (secretly recording his wife so he could monitor his conversations) was excused because he was super into hockey and, well, “he was kind of a scummy guy”. And also it was all okay in the end because the son of the abuser, Bobby Ryan, through watching the abuse of his mother, supposedly gained skills that supposedly contributed to him becoming a professional hockey player.
What the actual hell.
This type of shit is what allows abusers to continue to abuse, and what keeps women trapped, ignored by society, and left without options. This is why professional athletes’ wives and girlfriends become the enemy and their abusers the victims when a man is suspended for a game for punching a woman in the face or slamming her head into the ground. This is how Chanel Miller could be raped and then watch as the narrative was turned on her, with Brock Turner being called a victim because he couldn’t finish his college swimming career. This is how women can be sidelined as a minor detail in the story of a powerful man.
The abused wife in this story may have made the choice to adopt this narrative, I’m not going to judge her for her choices, but I am sure as hell going to judge Weingarten. As a journalist and a writer, Weingarten had a duty to do better. Painting the criminal justice system as the bad guy (arresting the abuser after he violated a restraining order, fled prosecution, and lived under an assumed name was “harsh”), treating the abuser as a tragic figure, and calling this a love story is unconscionable.
What the actual hell.
This type of shit is what allows abusers to continue to abuse, and what keeps women trapped, ignored by society, and left without options. This is why professional athletes’ wives and girlfriends become the enemy and their abusers the victims when a man is suspended for a game for punching a woman in the face or slamming her head into the ground. This is how Chanel Miller could be raped and then watch as the narrative was turned on her, with Brock Turner being called a victim because he couldn’t finish his college swimming career. This is how women can be sidelined as a minor detail in the story of a powerful man.
The abused wife in this story may have made the choice to adopt this narrative, I’m not going to judge her for her choices, but I am sure as hell going to judge Weingarten. As a journalist and a writer, Weingarten had a duty to do better. Painting the criminal justice system as the bad guy (arresting the abuser after he violated a restraining order, fled prosecution, and lived under an assumed name was “harsh”), treating the abuser as a tragic figure, and calling this a love story is unconscionable.
December 18, 2021
I thought Gene Weingarten just wrote a humor column for the Washington Post. This inventive title shows he can also write a fine book. The title sets up the book's premise. He randomly picks December 28, 1986. He manages to take the different news events happening on that day and splice them into a compelling narrative. Some were more interesting than others. For instance, the mystery author John D. MacDonald died on 12/28/86. I've read a fair number of his books and track which ones on Goodreads. I have to check to make sure I haven't already read one before I can start it. Anyway, Mr. Weingarten has written a fun nonfiction book.
December 3, 2020
Terrific premise. Good writing and I will look for more by the author.
But omg all the True Crime episodes. Way too much gore, abuse, evil, greed. Proportionally much more of that than could be considered "ordinary."
Couldn't Gene have picked a few more "ordinary" events? Surely some grandchild accomplished something amazing the day of a grandparent's passing, or some baby was born to a functional family and grew up to be someone who served challenged families, or someone was the first in their family to get accepted to university.... something more typical, ordinary, and happy.
But he clearly had fun doing research, both in archives and in interviews. That shows, and so some readers will like it. However, I cannot recommend it.
In fact, the more I digest it, the less I value it. Knocked down a star.
But omg all the True Crime episodes. Way too much gore, abuse, evil, greed. Proportionally much more of that than could be considered "ordinary."
Couldn't Gene have picked a few more "ordinary" events? Surely some grandchild accomplished something amazing the day of a grandparent's passing, or some baby was born to a functional family and grew up to be someone who served challenged families, or someone was the first in their family to get accepted to university.... something more typical, ordinary, and happy.
But he clearly had fun doing research, both in archives and in interviews. That shows, and so some readers will like it. However, I cannot recommend it.
In fact, the more I digest it, the less I value it. Knocked down a star.
November 24, 2019
Well, the master of American feature-writing has done it, rising to his own challenge to prove, once and for all, that's there's no such thing as an uneventful day -- even if, by bad luck of the draw, that day happens to fall in the newspaper person's dead zone between Christmas and New Year's.
Gene Weingarten finds an impressive amount of totally human stories that happened on Dec. 28, 1986, and goes back and re-reports them, unveiling an astonishing amount of details. I never should have doubted him, but I did. Read it and weep.
Gene Weingarten finds an impressive amount of totally human stories that happened on Dec. 28, 1986, and goes back and re-reports them, unveiling an astonishing amount of details. I never should have doubted him, but I did. Read it and weep.
January 4, 2021
I am begrudgingly giving this book five stars. It really doesn't live up to its billing. I love the idea of taking one day and doing a deep dive into old newspapers and news stories, but some of the stories here are only tangentially related to December 28, 1986.
However, the stories that do connect are very well-written and many of them sent me down rabbit holes - always an indicator of a fun read. I had not heard any of the stories before.
If Weingarten does this again with another day in history I will be on board.
However, the stories that do connect are very well-written and many of them sent me down rabbit holes - always an indicator of a fun read. I had not heard any of the stories before.
If Weingarten does this again with another day in history I will be on board.
September 20, 2020
I liked this book quite a lot. A date was chosen, December 28, 1986. What happened on this date? Quite a lot it appears. I learned a lot that I should have known, but didn’t. Some of he stories involve famous people but most are just about extraordinary things that happened on a single day to ordinary day.
November 27, 2019
What I liked best about this book was how it recreated a feel for the era. What I liked least was how it recreated a feel for the era. There are definitely aspects of society which have improved.
August 2, 2020
An intriguing idea made for a very interesting book! On New Year's Day 2013, the author and a friend asked three people to pick from a hat a random month, day, and year. That day was December 28, 1986, and the author then spent the next six years researching, interviewing, and compiling the fascinating events of a seemingly unimportant day into this most enjoyable book. What he and his friend had thought would be a slow news day became a day of countless tales of family, friends, politics, love, murder, death, and reaffirmation of life throughout the United States, proving that there is no such thing as an ordinary day.
A great quote found near the end of the day/book: "The day would quickly fade into imperfect memory. The events of a single day are hard to hold on to in the relentless flow of time, the most powerful and mysterious force of all. Everything moves on."
A great quote found near the end of the day/book: "The day would quickly fade into imperfect memory. The events of a single day are hard to hold on to in the relentless flow of time, the most powerful and mysterious force of all. Everything moves on."
September 23, 2021
I should have read the blurb more carefully. I was expecting, from the title, a lovely story about wonderful things, about joy and awe and serendipity. What I got was murder and crime and death and blood and gore and broken lives and horrible things. I kept at it for the first 5 or so, but I am not interested in reading of terrors and evil. I'll be some time bleaching this out of my brain. Ick.
July 7, 2019
Weingarten is a journalist who came up with the idea of writing a book about a single day in America. After setting some parameters so the date was not too far in the past to find people to interview nor too recent he plucked a random day out of a hat and wound up with December 28, 1986. He then sets about telling the stories of things that happened to people on that day around the country from small personal things that changed individual lives like beating a video game to bigger things like local murders that never made the national spotlight but no doubt had lasting impacts. Sometimes he tells the story of just what happened on that day and other times he uses it as a spring board to talk about the lives of people farther into the future and how something that happened on that day influenced where their lives ended up. Some stuff it was very obvious how he could have found the stories he pursued just by searching headlines in newspaper databases for that day. Others I'm very curious how he even found out about what he was writing about because save for one story he never tells you. It's a fascinating book and a real look at how big things are happening in people's lives every day even when they don't constitute big news events.
March 14, 2020
Weingarten chose a day, December 28, 1986, and found stories reported on that day. He then followed those stories to present day.
Each chapter is time stamped, so we are taken through the full day beginning in the wee morning hours. This is compelling reading. Weingarten is a journalist and that is obvious while reading. Each chapter is engaging and gives just the right amount of detail. I loved each person I met and I was moved by more than one of these stories.
I highly recommend this one. You could read it one chapter at a time and really savor each story.
Each chapter is time stamped, so we are taken through the full day beginning in the wee morning hours. This is compelling reading. Weingarten is a journalist and that is obvious while reading. Each chapter is engaging and gives just the right amount of detail. I loved each person I met and I was moved by more than one of these stories.
I highly recommend this one. You could read it one chapter at a time and really savor each story.
January 4, 2021
I expected more of the feel of that day. It's more that the day in question is where the thread starts and the author goes back or forward from there. Still, it's a good opportunity to re-examine our current cultural assumptions and technological achievements which we assume to be normal.
November 23, 2019
This is kind of a corny telling of one day in America. There is a lot of judgement in these tellings, which sometimes felt a little heavy-handed. Still, on the whole, an interesting book.
January 4, 2021
I read this for an upcoming IRL book club meeting. Interesting concept, full of a well-balanced selections of stories. The author randomly selected a day/month/year, in this case 12/28/86, which was 30 years in the past, and researched events & stories of ordinary/not-so-ordinary things that happened that day in America. In most cases, he followed up with the characters in present day, but not always. Ran the gamut from crime stories, to tragedies, to romantic connections, politics, to Jerry Garcia. Each story or item was stand-alone, yet linked by the common thread of the date it occurred. As said, a very interesting concept.
June 2, 2024
He’s done it again
May 16, 2022
Among the many reasons I enjoy reading biographies of the presidents are that I often get to see how lives intersect, and discover how different people experience the same events. Sometimes the smallest of occurrences can have a rippling effect on the future. One Day offers all of this in an interesting, sometimes humorous, way.
The book details multiple events that happened throughout the course of a late-December day in the United States, three days after Christmas, in the middle of a notable decade. But it also reveals the backstory leading up to these events, and often carries them into the distant future – present day – to show their lasting impact and results. Mostly plucked from newspapers, the stories tend to be dark, covering murders, accidents, and abuse, but usually steer toward a positive end. But there are also light-hearted subjects, including a weather vane that caused a firestorm, professional hockey and football, and inexplicable love stories. Something for everyone in a book about anyone.
As readers, we are quickly set up to wonder if former vice president Dick Cheney would have survived his heart transplant if not for the presence of his surgeon on the sidelines of another a quarter-century earlier. Near the end, we can hear the banter in our heads of an aging married couple, and picture them being interviewed as if they were on a couch for the culminating montage in When Harry Met Sally.
My only disappointments were the occasional editing misses in the second half of the book, and that Weingarten did not present more of an enlightening grand finale to bring it all together. But his gripping, beautiful introduction makes up for the latter, and maybe it is intentional that there is no spectacular conclusion: After all, it was just a random day.
EDIT after 2022 re-read: The final chapter did actually tie it all together in an appropriate way, recapping some of the moments from throughout the book on the day, and returning to the idea of life as amercement of indeterminate duration. It points out how easily we forget most life lessons learned in a short period of time, allowing us to fall back on old ways.
The book details multiple events that happened throughout the course of a late-December day in the United States, three days after Christmas, in the middle of a notable decade. But it also reveals the backstory leading up to these events, and often carries them into the distant future – present day – to show their lasting impact and results. Mostly plucked from newspapers, the stories tend to be dark, covering murders, accidents, and abuse, but usually steer toward a positive end. But there are also light-hearted subjects, including a weather vane that caused a firestorm, professional hockey and football, and inexplicable love stories. Something for everyone in a book about anyone.
As readers, we are quickly set up to wonder if former vice president Dick Cheney would have survived his heart transplant if not for the presence of his surgeon on the sidelines of another a quarter-century earlier. Near the end, we can hear the banter in our heads of an aging married couple, and picture them being interviewed as if they were on a couch for the culminating montage in When Harry Met Sally.
My only disappointments were the occasional editing misses in the second half of the book, and that Weingarten did not present more of an enlightening grand finale to bring it all together. But his gripping, beautiful introduction makes up for the latter, and maybe it is intentional that there is no spectacular conclusion: After all, it was just a random day.
EDIT after 2022 re-read: The final chapter did actually tie it all together in an appropriate way, recapping some of the moments from throughout the book on the day, and returning to the idea of life as amercement of indeterminate duration. It points out how easily we forget most life lessons learned in a short period of time, allowing us to fall back on old ways.
February 12, 2020
This was a strange book. It isn't really what it seems to be, which is a chronicle of one randomly picked day, Dec 28, 1986 in the US. Some chapters made sense, such as the murder on that day of Cara Knott by an on-duty CHP officer, I remember that one, but mostly this date is just a jumping off point for stories about randomly picked people. Sometimes the connection was simply that the person in question wrote a diary entry for that date. Or one guy's father was killed on the day, but the chapter was about him, and he hadn't even been born yet. Some of these tales were pretty dull or icky and I couldn't even figure out why they were included.
December 29, 2019
First off, Gene Weingarten is a talented writer and his premise for writing the book was very intriguing. That said, I typically read books for two reasons: to be educated and to be entertained. This accomplished neither end, and I stopped reading halfway in (actually 50% + 1 page so I could say I read the majority of it). Nearly every story was negative and depressing and left me wondering whether journalists lack the ability to chronicle anything uplifting anymore. Life has enough negativity in it, I don't need to seek out more in the books I read.
January 4, 2020
3.5 stars. Weingarten picks a day out of hat -- Dec 28, 1986 and takes a look at the events of the day to paint a picture of life in America. Some of the stories are about events of the day, sometimes the event of the day (a date, a wedding0 is the starting point of something, sometimes it is the end. In all of the cases, Weingarten pulls on the threads and tells compelling stories. There were a few times where I was uncomfortable with how he was describing situations -- but overall, I really enjoyed this one and thought the premise was fascinating.
December 20, 2019
I did not finish this book. It started off great, but soon slowed to a painful crawl. I found myself skipping many pages in a chapter, then skipping entire chapters. It just wasn’t for me.
May 31, 2025
Weingarten charts a full day's worth of news stories in a randomly selected day -- December 28, 1986 -- beginning and ending at midnight, with various diversions into related stories and incidents. A lot of this is fascinating -- I do love a rambling, "and hey here's another fact..." narrative -- although sometimes Weingarten gets a bit in the weeds (I'm not sure I needed quite so many stories about how random couples met and why they stayed together). Also, while I still enjoyed this meandering journey, I have to mention that the way Weingarten writes about his female subjects sometimes gave me the ick. The focus on appearance and especially weight -- like dude, why? Also, were we really still saying "transsexuals" in 2019? I do not feel like we were.
A compelling if flawed read.
A compelling if flawed read.
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