Straight from the popular "Middle Column" in "The Wall Street Journal" come stories that open a window on the odd, bizarre, and amusing side of the human condition.
On any given day, millions of Wall Street Journal readers put aside the serious business and economic news of the day to focus first on the paper's middle column (a.k.a. the A-hed), a virtual sound-bubble for light literary fare -- a short story, a tall tale, an old yarn, a series of vignettes, and other unexpected delights that seem to "float off the page." In this first-ever compendium of middle-column pieces, you'll find an eclectic selection of writings, from the outlandish to the oddly enlightening. Read about:
- one man's attempt to translate the Bible into Klingon
- sheep orthodontics, pet-freezing, and toad-smoking
- being hip in Cairo, modeling at auto shows, piano-throwing
- the fate of mail destined for the World Trade Center after 9/11
- the plight of oiled otters in Prince William Sound

...and much, much more. Edited by 20-year Journal veteran Ken Wells, and with a foreword by Liar's Poker author Michael Lewis, Floating Off the Page is the perfect elixir for fans of innovative prose in all its forms and function.
This is a sparkling anthology of the best of The Wall Street Journal's "middle column" features that have appeared regularly on Page One of The Wall Street Journal for the past fifty years. The "A-hed"-so called because of its headline style-has evolved into an icon of American feature writing, its major charm being the ability to tell a story with wit and whimsy in 1,500 words or less. It's often a story a reader unfamiliar with the Journal wouldn't expect to find in such an august publication. Indeed, the bit of high-profile real estate that it occupies once held a daily tip sheet on the stock market. But the Journal's legendary managing editor, Barney Kilgore, decided one day that what the Journal's harried business readers really needed was a tonic or a diversion-a story that in his words, "floated off the page each day" and would be "the kind of story you don't expect to read in The Wall Street Journal." That explains why readers recently were treated to a piece on people who now freeze-dry their pets, and why a few years ago they read about the not-uncontroversial efforts to translate the Bible into Klingon. Those are but two examples of stories that actually appear in this unique and fascinating anthology.