June 2025

A tender, critical, and curious window into the American ethos of quantity over quality. To be American is to hoard, to collect. But what if that wasn’t a bad thing? Emily Mester’s American Bulk asks readers to see our national consumer obsession as more than a modern scourge—to consider consumption a complex character in a larger story of capitalism, imperialism, and technology. In sharply witty prose, Mester details how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty reveals the insidious performance of retail sales, how Yelp reviews highlight the lengths we go to curate our personal ephemera, and why we can’t help but find joy at Costco. In a stark reexamination of diet culture and fatness, Mester recounts her teenage summer at fat camp and the liberatory body neutrality that surrounded her. And in Storm Lake, Iowa, Mester excavates her grandmother’s abandoned hoard, among other discoveries about her own family’s history. American Bulk asks us to regard consumption not with guilt but with grace and empathy.

Henry Franken has a problem with money-he has too much of it. When his unprincipled father dies, thirty-three-year-old Henry inherits a massive estate, including an Upper East Side residential building. He must confront the reality of his new financial status, directly conflicting with his well-honed identity as a "progressive liberal." When he shows up to collect the keys to his father's building, he notices a sign: "Doorman Wanted." Seeing a chance to stave off the complexities of his inheritance, Henry applies for the position under a pseudonym . . . and gets it. Now, no one in the building knows that Doorman "Franklin Hanratty" is the building's new mysterious owner. Through interactions with residents and the homeless outside his door, Henry develops from an idealistic young person avoiding the demands of his fortune, into a man who accepts the opportunity to direct that wealth toward a broader good.