"With compassion, wit, and piercing honesty, Emily Mester delves into our love of consumerism—and what our desires say about who we want to become. Bravely personal, incisively critical, American Bulk is a report on our national psyche and a captivating family story." -Larissa Pham, author of National Book Critics Circle John Leonard finalist Pop Song

"A funny, incisive, humane dispatch from a brilliant new voice in nonfiction. American Bulk had me cringing, laughing, and yes, even tearing up as it drew the contours of my own, and our national, appetites. I remain amazed that a book so clear-eyed in its scrutiny of our capitalistic perversity left me with so much hope." -Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism

"American Bulk is composed of some of my favorite nonfiction essays on family, capital, love and dysfunction that I’ve ever read. It's a refreshing and needed reframing of what all these things mean, today, right now, as the neon haze of fast-food signs flicker from their long-time dominion of the American experience. Mester examines our compulsion to consume with careful incisions that I kept highlighting and coming back to, just to whisper the words to myself to make their clear-eyed cleverness my own." -Arabelle Sicardi, beauty writer and author of the forthcoming The House of Beauty