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The Real Work by Adam Gopnik
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The Real Work

On the Mystery of Mastery

$33.60

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Adam Gopnik

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Length 7 hours 50 minutes
Language English
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Longtime New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik investigates a foundational human question: How do we learn―and master―a new skill?

For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: How did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In The Real Work―his title the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick―Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor (from the DMV), among others, trying his late-middle-age hand at things he assumed were beyond him. He finds that mastering a skill is a process of methodically breaking down and building up, piece by piece―and that true mastery, in any field, requires mastering other people’s minds. Read by the author, The Real Work is exuberant and profound, and is ultimately about why we relentlessly seek to better ourselves in the first place.

ADAM GOPNIK is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won three National Magazine Awards for essays and for criticism. He is the author of the upcoming audiobook So Many Steves: Afternoons with Steve Martin (May 2023) as well as numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon. He lives in New York City.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

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Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

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Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting