The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People - Softcover

"Orlean's snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose...is fast becoming one of our national treasures."
--The Washington Post Book World

"Susan Orlean is a master of the quick sketch....She writes arresting, short pieces, serendipitous material that readers stumble across by chance, then read on, transfixed by the casual grace and beauty of these miniatures."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Through the power of energetic reporting and sharp writing, the national character is precisely what Orlean captures. She is a kind of latter-day Tocqueville."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Reading Bullfighter will leave you convinced that the world is much wider and stranger than you had thought and that the most ordinary-seeming people are often the most remarkable."
--Us Weekly

In a collection of essays from The New Yorker, the acclaimed author of The Orchid Thief offers a series of intriguing profiles of some of the colorful people she has encountered, from the first female Spanish matador to the African king who drives a New York City cab to Silly Billy, a popular entertainer on the children's birthday-party circuit. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.