Book excerpt: Seven days a week, year in and year out, Amy Dickinson has taken on life’s greatest and smallest questions. Her readers ask her about their relationship dramas, parenting dilemmas, and workplace complaints, offering a glimpse into the everyday and offbeat struggles we all sometimes confront. Amy responds with bracing honesty and gentle humor, presenting clear-eyed solutions to sometimes confounding problems. Her insights—and the weekly look into the lives of strangers—have kept readers turning to her column for almost two decades now. Ask Amy: Essential Wisdom from America’s Favorite Advice Columnist collects some of the most intriguing questions and incisive responses from the Ask Amy column. Have you ever wondered whether your spouse was having a phone affair? Or what you could do about obnoxious gym-goers, coworkers, siblings, and children? Maybe, maybe not—but either way, Amy’s direct and no-nonsense thinking may help solve the problems you’re facing, too. Ask Amy is an essential and entertaining collection of advice, written in the tone of a best friend who gives the hard truth and a comforting hand in troubled times. Her readers’ questions may seem odd or unsolvable, but they’re a reminder that we all have problems we might need a little help fixing.