Men My Mother Dated, and Other Mostly True Tales

HEAR! the shocking tale of Mom's first arrest!

THRILL! to the unexpurgated truth behind winking Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing.

GASP IN HORROR! as a young woman is coerced into seeing "The Eddie Cantor Story" six times in two weeks -- with six different men!


As heard on NPR's All Things Considered and This American Life, Brett Leveridge spins mostly true tales of small-town Lotharios and big-city dreams in a voice that is simultaneously hip and homespun -- and uniquely his own.

As the avid readership of his award-winning website, BRETTnews, and his long-running Might magazine column can attest, there's something universal in these tales of the dating life, peopled as they are with well-intentioned boys-next-door, two-timing playboys, and traveling roustabouts with a girl in every town.

Leveridge can -- and does -- hold forth on many other topics as well, offering his decidedly contrarian views on major holidays, hilarious skewerings of television ads, and a bittersweet account of the life of the straight man often presumed to be gay.

Like the best of our current essayists -- Roy Blount, Jr., David Sedaris, Sandra Tsing Loh -- Leveridge is at once forward-thinking and nostalgic. With his enormously appealing voice and happy knack for taking a commonplace topic and veering off into uncharted territory, Leveridge is, as one scribe put it, "Will Rogers meets Garrison Keiller meets Jack Kerouac."

Men My Mother Dated and Other Mostly True Tales collects the best of Leveridge's work and, longtime fans will be pleased to learn, boasts all-new, never-before-published installments of Mom's romantic adventures and assorted other surprises.