Kent Russell's essays take him to society's ragged edges - the places where savagery and civilization collide. Perhaps among the misfits and the misunderstood - the losers, the hardcore, the alarming, the crazed, the downright frightening - he can find a way to reconcile his uneasy adult desires and his deepest childhood demons.

He goes 'horrorcore' at a four-day music festival in Illinois. He spends a long weekend getting drunk with a man who claims he has conditioned his body to withstand the bites of the most venomous snakes. He finds a castaway on a tiny atoll off the coast of Australia. He explores the Amish obsession with baseball.

Bristling with violence, tragedy and humour and wit, I Am Sorry To Think I Have Raised A Timid Son is a raw personal journey and an unforgettable portrait of masculinity in our time, by a ferociously brilliant and distinctive young voice in literary nonfiction.