Dave Eggers' first splash in publishing was a big one: the audaciously titled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Published in 2000, the book caught the attention of the media, and soon critical praise was being heaped upon the book's author, an unknown twenty-nine-year old journalist from Massachusetts. Eggers, who had previously founded and edited the lampoonish Might, took the same approach in his book, in the process taking stabs at the inflated egos of many who tackle their own life story with the assumption that other will care to read it. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius recalls the author's experiences growing up: how he raised his younger brother after both the boys' parents died of cancer. Describing his life as "so strange that it was inevitable that somebody would tell it," Eggers explained to Harper's Bazaar interviewer Melanie Rehak: "It started with the dying part and then...