In his award-winning novels The Dining Car and Sunshine Chief, Eric Peterson gives life to the sharp-tongued food writer and bon vivant Horace Button. Now, in this collection of personal essays, Peterson uses his same incisive pen to reveal his own misgivings, grievances, and delights with the world around him.

Part journalist, part travel writer, Peterson starts by chronicling several noteworthy trips, including traveling by rail from Los Angeles to Chicago aboard two magnificent private railroad cars and hitching a ride on a superyacht-complete with private chef-for a ten-day repositioning cruise up the Pacific Northwest's Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska.

These seventeen literary essays, which first appeared in the online daily magazine Pillar to Post, represent Peterson's first foray into nonfiction. In addition to his accounts of extravagant travel, Peterson takes aim at the modern culinary landscape-what's missing, what's egregiously offensive, and what satisfies his finicky temperament.

Abounding in mirth, filled with contentions that will both needle and delight the reader, Museum of the Unknown Writer offers a glimpse into the personal weltanschauung of a midlist author who shares his celebrated character's enthusiasm for epicurean foods, six-ounce martinis, and luxury travel.