Literary Collection Books
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America and Americans
Steinbeck, John
(Hardcover)
List Price: $55.00 Sale: $18.01
Photographs of Americans by various prominent photographers. Commentary by Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle
Hamilton, Saskia (Edt)
(Hardcover)
List Price: $50.00 Sale: $16.31
The correspondence between one of the most famous couples of twentieth-century literatureThe Dolphin Letters offers an unprecedented portrait of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick during the last seven years of Lowell’s life (1970 to 1977), a time of personal crisis and creative innovation for both writers. Centered on the letters they exchanged with each other and with other members of their circle - writers, intellectuals, friends, and publishers, including Elizabeth Bishop, Caroline Blackwood, Mary McCarthy, and Adrienne Rich - the book has the narrative sweep of a novel, telling the story of the dramatic breakup of their twenty-one-year marriage and their extraordinary, but late, reconciliation.Lowell’s controversial sonnet-sequence The Dolphin (for which he used Hardwick’s letters as a source) and his last book, Day by Day, were written during this period, as were Hardwick’s influential books Seduction and Betrayal: Essays on Women in Literature and Sleepless Nights: A Novel. Lowell and Hardwick are acutely intelligent observers of marriages, children, and friends, and of the feelings that their personal crises gave rise to.The Dolphin Letters, masterfully edited by Saskia Hamilton, is a debate about the limits of art - what occasions a work of art, what moral and artistic license artists have to make use of their lives as material, what formal innovations such debates give rise to. The crisis of Lowell’s The Dolphin was profoundly affecting to everyone surrounding him, and Bishop’s warning to Lowell - art just isn’t worth that much - haunts us today.
The Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition (The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume XIV)
Harper, Margaret Mills (Edt)
(Hardcover)
List Price: $60.00 Sale: $16.31
A new annotated edition of Yeats's indispensable, lifelong work of philosophy-a meditation on the connections between the imagination, history, and the metaphysical-this volume reveals the poet's greatest thoughts on the occult. First published in 1925, and then substantially revised by the author in 1937, A Vision is a unique work of literary modernism, and revelatory guide to Yeats's own poetry and thinking. Indispensable to an understanding of the poet's late work, and entrancing on its own merit, the book presents the "system" of philosophy, psychology, history, and the life of the soul that Yeats and his wife, George, received and created by means of mediumistic experiments from 1917 through the early 1920s. Yeats obsessively revised the original book that he wrote in 1925, and the 1937 version is the definitive version of what Yeats wanted to say. Now, presented in a scholarly edition for the first time by Yeats scholars Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine E. Paul, the 1937 version of A Vision is an important, essential literary resource and a must-have for all serious readers of Yeats.
The Letters of Sylvia Plath (Vol. 2 - 1956-1963)
Plath, Sylvia
(Hardcover)
List Price: $45.00 Sale: $14.61
The second volume in the definitive, complete collection of the letters of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Sylvia Plath, from the early years of her marriage to Ted Hughes to the final days leading to her suicide in 1963, many never before seen.One of the most talented and beloved poets, Sylvia Plath continues to fascinate and inspire the modern literary imagination. The tragedy of her untimely death at age thirty, almost fifty-five years ago, has left much unknown about her creative and personal life. In this remarkable second volume of the iconic poet and writer’s collected letters, the full range of Plath’s ambitions, talents, fears, and perspective is made visible through her own powerful words.As engaging as they are revealing, these remarkable letters cover the years from 1957 to 1963. They detail the last six tumultuous and prolific years of her life, covering her marriage to Ted Hughes, the births of her children Frieda and Nicholas, her early success, including the publication of the classic The Bell Jar, and her ongoing struggle with depression.The first compendium of its kind to include all of Plath’s letters from this period, The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 2 offers an intimate portrait of the writing life and mind of one of the most celebrated poets in literary history.
Letters to Vera
Nabokov, Vladimir
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $13.76
The letters of the great writer to his wife - gathered here for the first time - chronicle a decades-long love story and document anew the creative energies of an artist who was always at work.No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer is quite as beguiling as that of Vladimir Nabokov’s to Véra Slonim. She shared his delight in life’s trifles and literature’s treasures, and he rated her as having the best and quickest sense of humor of any woman he had met. From their first encounter in 1923, Vladimir’s letters to Véra form a narrative arc that tells a half-century-long love story, one that is playful, romantic, pithy and memorable. At the same time, the letters tell us much about the man and the writer. We see the infectious fascination with which Vladimir observed everything - animals, people, speech, the landscapes and cityscapes he encountered - and learn of the poems, plays, stories, novels, memoirs, screenplays and translations on which he worked ceaselessly. This delicious volume contains twenty-one photographs, as well as facsimiles of the letters themselves and the puzzles and doodles Vladimir often sent to Véra.
The 60s: The Story of a Decade
The New Yorker Magazine
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $12.91
This fascinating anthology collects notable New Yorker pieces from the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century - including work by James Baldwin, Pauline Kael, Sylvia Plath, Roger Angell, and Muriel Spark - alongside new assessments of the 1960s by some of today’s finest writers.Here are real-time accounts of these years, brought to immediate and profound life: Calvin Trillin reports on the integration of Southern universities, E. B. White and John Updike wrestle with the enormity of the Kennedy assassination, and Jonathan Schell travels with American troops into the jungles of Vietnam. Some of the truly timeless works of American journalism came out of The New Yorker that decade, including Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, all excerpted here. The arts, too, underwent an extraordinary transformation, with the magazine publishing such indelible short story masterpieces as John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and John Updike’s “A & P”; iconic poems by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton; and in-depth profiles of crucial cultural figures like Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Muhammad Ali (when he was still Cassius Clay). This collection of groundbreaking pieces is also given contemporary context by current New Yorker writers, resulting in an incomparable portrait of a truly galvanizing era.Including contributions by Renata Adler • Roger Angell • Hannah Arendt • James Baldwin • Truman Capote • Rachel Carson • John Cheever • Mavis Gallant • Pauline Kaell • Jane Kramer • John McPhee • Sylvia Plath • Muriel Spark • Calvin Trillin • John Updike • E. B. WhiteAnd featuring new perspectives by Jennifer Egan • Malcolm Gladwell • Dana Goodyear • Adam Gopnik • Jill Lepore • Larissa MacFarquhar • Evan Osnos • George Packer • Kelefa Sanneh
Speeches of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Orations Deserving of a Wider Audience
Usher, Shaun
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $12.91
This thoughtfully curated and richly illustrated collection celebrates oratory old and new, highlighting speeches we know and admire, while also shining a light on profound drafts that were never delivered or have until now been forgotten. Speeches of Note honors the words and ideas of some of history's most scintillating, provocative, and inspiring personalities.
Who Loses, Who Wins: The Journals of Kenneth Rose (Volume Two 1979-2014)
Rose, Kenneth
(Hardcover)
List Price: $38.99 Sale: $12.91
Kenneth Rose was one of the most astute observers of the post-war Establishment. The wry and amusing journals of the royal biographer and historian made objective observation a sculpted craft.His impeccable social placement located him within the beating heart of the national elite for decades. He was capable of writing substantial history, such as his priceless material on the abdication crisis from conversations with both the Duke of Windsor and the Queen Mother. Yet he maintained sufficient distance to achieve impartial documentation while working among political, clerical, military, literary and aristocratic circles. Relentless observation and a self-confessed difficulty ''to let a good story pass me by'' made Rose a legendary social commentator, while his impressive breadth of interests was underpinned by tremendous respect for the subjects of his enquiry.Brilliantly equipped as Rose was to witness, detail and report, the second volume of his journals vividly portrays some of the most important events and people of the last century, from the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 to Kenneth Rose''s death in 2014.
The 50s: The Story of a Decade
The New Yorker Magazine
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $12.48
Including contributions by Elizabeth Bishop * Truman Capote * John Cheever * Roald Dahl * Janet Flanner * Nadine Gordimer * A. J. Liebling * Dwight Macdonald * Joseph Mitchell * Marianne Moore * Vladimir Nabokov * Sylvia Plath * V. S. Pritchett * Adrienne Rich * Lillian Ross * Philip Roth * Anne Sexton * James Thurber * John Updike * Eudora Welty * E. B. White * Edmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Jonathan Franzen * Malcolm Gladwell * Adam Gopnik * Elizabeth Kolbert * Jill Lepore * Rebecca Mead * Paul Muldoon * Evan Osnos * David Remnick The 1950s are enshrined in the popular imagination as the decade of poodle skirts and "I Like Ike." But this was also a complex time, in which the afterglow of Total Victory firmly gave way to Cold War paranoia. A sense of trepidation grew with the Suez Crisis and the H-bomb tests. At the same time, the fifties marked the cultural emergence of extraordinary new energies, like those of Thelonious Monk, Sylvia Plath, and Tennessee Williams. The New Yorker was there in real time, chronicling the tensions and innovations that lay beneath the era's placid surface. In this thrilling volume, classic works of reportage, criticism, and fiction are complemented by new contributions from the magazine's present all-star lineup of writers, including Jonathan Franzen, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jill Lepore. Here are indelible accounts of the decade's most exciting players: Truman Capote on Marlon Brando as a pampered young star; Emily Hahn on Chiang Kai-shek in his long Taiwanese exi≤ and Berton Roueché on Jackson Pollock in his first flush of fame. Ernest Hemingway, Emily Post, Bobby Fischer, and Leonard Bernstein are also brought to vivid life in these pages. The magazine's commitment to overseas reporting flourished in the 1950s, leading to important dispatches from East Berlin, the Gaza Strip, and Cuba during the rise of Castro. Closer to home, the fight to break barriers and establish a new American identity led to both illuminating coverage, as in a portrait of Thurgood Marshall at an NAACP meeting in Atlanta, and trenchant commentary, as in E. B. White's blistering critique of Senator Joe McCarthy. The arts scene is here recalled in critical writing rarely reprinted, whether it's Wolcott Gibbs on My Fair Lady, Anthony West on Invisible Man, or Philip Hamburger on Candid Camera. The reader is made witness to the initial response to future cultural touchstones through Edmund Wilson's galvanizing book review of Doctor Zhivago and Kenneth Tynan's rapturous response to the original production of Gypsy. As always, The New Yorker didn't just consider the arts but contributed to them. Among the audacious young writers who began publishing in the fifties was one who would become a stalwart for the magazine in both fiction and criticism for fifty-five years: John Updike. Also featured here are great early works from Philip Roth and Nadine Gordimer, as well as startling poems by Theodore Roethke and Anne Sexton, among others. Completing the panoply are insightful and entertaining new pieces by present day New Yorker contributors examining the 1950s through contemporary eyes. The result is a vital portrait of American culture as only one magazine in the world could do it.
New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent
Busby, Margaret (Edt)
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.99 Sale: $11.12
A major international collection that brings together the work of more than 200 women writers of African descent, celebrating their artistry and showcasing their contributions to modern literature and international culture.Contributors include:• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie • Yrsa Daley Ward• Edwidge Danticat • Phillippa Yrsa De Villiers • Esi Edugyan • Eve Ewing • Nikki Finney • Roxane Gay• Margo Jefferson • Barbara Jenkins • Imbolo Mbue • Nnedi Okorafor • Chinelo Okparanta • Minna Salami • Zadie Smith • and more!Twenty-five years ago, Margaret Busby’s Daughters of Africa was published to international acclaim and hailed as “an extraordinary body of achievement . . . a vital document of lost history” (Sunday Times) and “the ultimate reference guide” (Washington Post). New Daughters of Africa continues that tradition for a new generation.This magnificent follow-up to the original landmark anthology brings together fresh and vibrant voices that have emerged from across the globe in the past two decades, from Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the United States. Each of the pieces in this remarkable collection demonstrates an uplifting sense of sisterhood, honors the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and addresses the common obstacles female writers of color face as they negotiate issues of race, gender, and class and address vital matters of independence, freedom, and oppression.A glorious portrayal of the richness, magnitude, and range of these visionary writers, New Daughters of Africa spans a range of genres - autobiography, memoir, oral history, letters, diaries, short stories, novels, poetry, drama, humor, politics, journalism, essays, and speeches - demonstrating the diversity and extraordinary literary achievements of black women who remain underrepresented, and whose contributions continue to be underrated in world culture today.
Essays One
Davis, Lydia
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $10.19
A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia DavisLydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her "a magician of self-consciousness," while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, "Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive."Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’s gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. With Essays One, Davis has, for the first time, gathered under one cover essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past four decades. In this first of two volumes, her subjects range from her earliest influences to her favorite short stories, from John Ashberry's translation of Rimbaud to Alan Cote's painting from a close study of the Shepherd's Psalm to a presentation of early tourist photographs.Davis is best known for her masterful stories and translations, but her peerless style is not bound by genre or form. Nor is the quality of her patient and thoughtful attention, as she turns her lens, here, on a range of subjects - reading, writing, memory, et al. In whatever she writes, Davis, with her wry and haunting voice, her generous and incisive curiosity, makes a singular contribution to American letters.
RFK: His Words for Our Times (Large Print)
Allen, C. Richard (Edt)
(Paperback)
List Price: $30.99 Sale: $10.19
In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Francis Kennedy’s death, an inspiring collection of his most famous speeches accompanied by commentary from notable historians and public figures.Twenty-five years after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, RFK: His Words for Our Times, a celebration of Kennedy’s life and legacy, was published to enormous acclaim. Now, a quarter century later, this classic volume has been thoroughly edited and updated. Through his own words we get a direct and intimate perspective on Kennedy’s views on civil rights, social justice, the war in Vietnam, foreign policy, the desirability of peace, the need to eliminate poverty, and the role of hope in American politics.Here, too, is evidence of the impact of those he knew and worked with, including his brother John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez, among others. The tightly curated collection also includes commentary about RFK’s legacy from major historians and public figures, among them Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Eric Garcetti, William Manchester, Elie Wiesel, and Desmond Tutu. Assembled with the full cooperation of the Kennedy family, RFK: His Words for Our Times is a potent reminder of Robert Kennedy’s ability to imagine a greater America - a faith and vision we could use today.
The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017
Amis, Martin
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.95 Sale: $10.19
As a journalist, critic, and novelist, Martin Amis has always turned his keen intellect and unrivaled prose loose on an astonishing range of topics—politics, sports, celebrity, America, and, of course, literature. Collected here is some of his best nonfiction work from over two decades. Amis writes about finally confronting the effects of aging on his athletic prowess. He revisits the worlds of Bellow and Nabokov, his “twin peaks,” masters who have obsessed and inspired him. And he turns his piercingly observant eye on Donald Trump, whom he finds “scowling out from under an omelette of makeup” in the run-up to the 2016 Republican Convention, and at a post-election rally, regarding his crowd of supporters with a “flat sneer of Ozymandian hauteur.”Overflowing with startling and singular turns of phrase, and complete with new commentary by the author, The Rub of Time is a vital addition to any bookshelf, and the perfect primer for readers discovering Amis’s fierce talents for the first time.
A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma
Eimer, David
(Hardcover)
List Price: $34.00 Sale: $10.19
David Eimer journeys to the heart of Burma and out to its unexplored vistas, bringing to vivid life all its riches and complexities.For almost fifty years Burma was ruled by a paranoid military dictatorship and isolated from the outside world. At this time, Burma became Myanmar without local accord. Eimer sides with the locals by using its original name, refusing to let the nation's history be rewritten. In 2015, a historic election swept an Aung San Suu Kyi-led civilian government to power and was supposed to usher in a new golden era of democracy and progress, but Burma remains unstable and undeveloped, a little-understood country.Nothing is straightforward in this captivating land-home to a combustible mix of races, religions and resources. Eimer reveals a country where temples take priority over infrastructure, fortune tellers thrive and golf courses are carved out of war zones. Setting out from Yangon, David Eimer travels through this enigmatic nation, from the tropical south to the Burmese Himalayas in the far north. The story of modern Burma is told through the voices of the people Eimer encounters: former political exiles, squatters in Yangon's shanty towns, radical monks, Rohingya refugees, princesses and warlords, and ethnic minorities clustered along Burma's frontiers.Layers of history are unfurled and innumerable stories are woven together to create a sensitive and revelatory portrait of this mysterious country. Authoritative and ground-breaking, A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma is set to be a modern classic of travel writing.
Westminster Diary: A Reluctant Minister under Tony Blair
Donoughue, Bernard
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $10.19
On 2nd May 1997, Tony Blair swept into Downing Street, ending almost twenty years of Conservative government and beginning a decade as Prime Minister. Bernard Donoughue, a Labour peer in the House of Lords, chronicled the path to this momentous election victory in his diaries and this volume sheds new light on the process of forming government and on life working as a minister in the House of Lords. Infused with Donoughue's trademark wit and insight, the diaries covers daily life for a working peer – from the committees, bill discussion and public appearances to political spats – both policy-related and personal. Donoughue also casts a wry glance at a peer's extra-curricular events – from dinners and other high-profile social events to his own favourite hobby, horse-racing. Featuring a cast of high-profile political characters, this book is a must-read for fans of political diaries and anyone with an interest in the inside workings of Westminster.
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays
Young, Damon
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.99 Sale: $10.19
For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as "How should I react here, as a professional black person?" and "Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?" are forever relevant.What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him.It’s a condition that’s sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the "being straight" thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to "Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies."And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white.From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.
Serious Noticing: Selected Essays, 1997-2019
Wood, James
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $9.98
The definitive collection of literary essays by The New Yorker’s award-winning longtime book criticEver since the publication of his first essay collection, The Broken Estate, in 1999, James Wood has been widely regarded as a leading literary critic of the English-speaking world. His essays on canonical writers (Gustav Flaubert, Herman Melville), recent legends (Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson) and significant contemporaries (Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante) have established a standard for informed and incisive appreciation, composed in a distinctive literary style all their own.Together, Wood’s essays, and his bestselling How Fiction Works, share an abiding preoccupation with how fiction tells its own truths, and with the vocation of the writer in a world haunted by the absence of God. In Serious Noticing, Wood collects his best essays from two decades of his career, supplementing earlier work with autobiographical reflections from his book The Nearest Thing to Life and recent essays from The New Yorker on young writers of extraordinary promise. The result is an essential guide to literature in the new millennium.
A Vision (1925) (Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Vol. XIII)
Yeats, William Butler
(Softcover)
List Price: $26.99 Sale: $9.76
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume XIII: A Vision is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholar George Bornstein and formerly the late Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper. One of the strangest works of literary modernism, A Vision is Yeats's greatest occult work. Edited by Yeats scholars Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, the volume presents the "system" of philosophy, psychology, history, and the life of the soul that Yeats and his wife George (née Hyde Lees) received and created by means of mediumistic experiments from 1917 through the early 1920s. Yeats obsessively revised the book, and the revised 1937 version is much more widely available than its predecessor. The original 1925 version of A Vision, poetic, unpolished, masked in fiction, and close to the excitement of the automatic writing that the Yeatses believed to be its supernatural origin, is presented here in a scholarly edition for the first time. The text, minimally corrected to retain the sense of the original, is extensively annotated, with particular attention paid to the relationship between the published book and its complex genetic materials. Indispensable to an understanding of the poet's late work and entrancing on its own merit, A Vision aims to be, all at once, a work of theoretical history, an esoteric philosophy, an aesthetic symbology, a psychological schema, and a sacred book. It is as difficult as it is essential reading for any student of Yeats.
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
VanderMeer, Jeff
(Paperback)
List Price: $24.95 Sale: $9.76
This all-new definitive guide to writing imaginative fiction takes a completely novel approach and fully exploits the visual nature of fantasy through original drawings, maps, renderings, and exercises to create a spectacularly beautiful and inspiring object. Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few.
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
Vandermeer, Jeff
(Softcover)
List Price: $24.99 Sale: $9.76
Wonderbook has become the definitive guide to writing science fiction and fantasy by offering an accessible, example-rich approach that emphasizes the importance of playfulness as well as pragmatism. It also exploits the visual nature of genre culture and employs bold, full-color drawings, maps, renderings, and visualizations to stimulate creative thinking. On top of all that, the book features sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names working in the field today, including George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, and Karen Joy Fowler.For the fifth anniversary of the original publication, Jeff VanderMeer has added an additional 50 pages of diagrams, illustrations, and writing exercises creating the ultimate volume of inspiring advice that is also a stunning and inspiring object.
Sabers and Utopias: Visions of Latin America
Llosa, Mario Vargas
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $9.51
A landmark collection of essays on the Nobel laureate’s conception of Latin America, past, present, and futureThroughout his career, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa has grappled with the concept of Latin America on a global stage. Examining liberal claims and searching for cohesion, he continuously weighs the reality of the continent against the image it projects, and considers the political dangers and possibilities that face this diverse set of countries.Now this illuminating and versatile collection assembles these never-before-translated criticisms and meditations. Reflecting the intellectual development of the writer himself, these essays distill the great events of Latin America’s recent history, analyze political groups like FARC and Sendero Luminoso, and evaluate the legacies of infamous leaders such as Papa Doc Duvalier and Fidel Castro. Arranged by theme, they trace Vargas Llosa’s unwavering demand for freedom, his embrace of and disenchantment with revolutions, and his critique of nationalism, populism, indigenism, and corruption.From the discovery of liberal ideas to a defense of democracy, buoyed by a passionate invocation of Latin American literature and art, Sabers and Utopias is a monumental collection from one of our most important writers. Uncompromising and adamantly optimistic, these social and political essays are a paean to thoughtful engagement and a brave indictment of the discrimination and fear that can divide a society.
When They Go Low, We Go High: Speeches That Shape the World and Why We Need Them
Collins, Philip
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.50 Sale: $9.51
When First Lady Michelle Obama approached the podium at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, nobody could have predicted that her rousing and emotional "When they go low, we go high" speech would go on to become the motto for the political left and an anthem for opponents of oppression worldwide. It was a speech with the kind of emotional pull rarely heard these days, joining a long list of addresses that have made history. But what about Obama's speech made it so great?When They Go Low, We Go High explores the most notable speeches in history, analyzing the rhetorical tricks to uncover how the right speech at the right time can profoundly shape the world. Traveling across continents and centuries, political speechwriter Philip Collins reveals what Thomas Jefferson owes to Cicero and Pericles, who really gave the Gettysburg Address, and what Elizabeth I shares with Winston Churchill.In telling the story of great and sometimes infamous speeches--including those from Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Disraeli, Hitler, Elie Wiesel, Margaret Thatcher, and Barack and Michelle Obama--Collins breathes new life into words you thought you knew well, telling the story of democracy. Whether it's the inaugural addresses of presidents or the revolutionary writings of Castro, Pankhurst, and Mandela, Collins illuminates and contextualizes these moments with sensitivity and humor.When They Go Low, We Go High is a strong defense of the power of public speaking to propagate and protect democracy and an urgent reminder that when great men and women speak to us, their words can change the world.
Had I Known: Collected Essays
Ehrenreich, Barbara
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $9.25
A self-proclaimed "myth buster by trade," Barbara Ehrenreich has covered an extensive range of topics as a journalist and political activist, and is unafraid to dive into intellectual waters that others deem too murky. Now, Had I Known gathers the articles and excerpts from a long-ranging career that most highlight Ehrenreich's brilliance, social consciousness, and wry wit.
Madame Clairevoyant's Guide to the Stars: Astrology, Our Icons, and Our Selves
Comstock-Gay, Claire
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.99 Sale: $9.25
A soulful exploration of the twelve astrological signs embodied by our living “stars” - from divas to philosophers, poets to punks - and the ways they can help us better understand ourselves and each other, from the wildly popular astrology columnist for New York magazine’s The Cut.Whether you believe in it or not, astrology’s job has never been to give us a preordained vision of the future, nor to sort us into twelve neat personality types, but to provide the tools and language for delving into our weirdest, best, most thorny contradictions, and for understanding ourselves and each other in our full complexity. The stars and the planets then are more like mirrors that show us who we are, that give us an understanding of how to be and how to move through the world; how certain people do it differently, and what we can learn by studying them.In Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, Claire Comstock-Gay brings the sky down to Earth and points to our popular “stars” - from Aretha Franklin to Mr. Rogers, from poets in Cancer to punk singers in Scorpio - to reveal what the sky has to teach us about being human. In this wise, lyrically written guide, she examines the twelve astrological signs, illuminating the ways each one is more complicated, beautiful, and surprising than you might have been told. Claire suggests that actually it’s okay, and even important, to be a seeker, to hunger for self-knowledge, and if astrology is the vehicle for that inquiry, so be it.Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars offers a clear introduction to the basics and an innovative new framework for creatively using astrology to illuminate our lives on earth. It’s a road map to our internal world, yes, but Claire also reminds us that it’s still our job to navigate it. Combining both heavenly insights and the earthly wisdom of writers like Cheryl Strayed and Heather Havrilesky and the poetry of Patricia Lockwood and Mary Oliver, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars offers a fresh, profound, and fun way to look at ourselves and others, and perhaps see each more clearly. And in that way, this book is not just beautiful, but transformative.
On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays (New, Revised and Expanded Third Edition)
Reynolds, Richard (Edt)
(Paperback)
List Price: $24.99 Sale: $9.25
Few subjects hold more universal appeal than that of medicine, and surely few books have evoked medicine's drama and magic more powerfully than On Doctoring. In its many forms, from age-old ritual to the cutting edge of modern science, medicine concerns us all. It is a human profession, practiced by people who have dedicated their lives not only to science but also to humanity. In the words of the great physician-writer Sir William Osler, "The physician needs a clear head and a kind heart; his work is arduous and complex, requiring the exercise of the very highest faculties of the mind, while constantly appealing to the emotions and higher feelings." It is the humanity in medicine that has inspired the pens of countless writers, and that has now been captured in this remarkable anthology of medical literature. This newly expanded edition of On Doctoring is an extraordinary collection of stories, poems, and essays written by physicians and non-physicians alike - works that eloquently record what it is like to be sick, to be cured, to lose, or to triumph. Drawing on the full spectrum of human emotions, the editors have included selections from such important and diverse writers as Anton Chekhov, W. H. Auden, William Carlos Williams, John Keats, John Donne, Robert Coles, Pablo Neruda, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, and Abraham Verghese. Among the new authors included in this edition are Rainer Maria Rilke, Lisel Mueller, and May Sarton. In this era of managed healthcare, when medicine is becoming more institutionalized and impersonal, this book recaptures the breadth and the wonder of the medical profession. Presenting the issues, concerns, and challenges facing doctors and patients alike, On Doctoring is at once illuminating and provocative, a compelling record of the human spirit.
Coventry: Essays
Cusk, Rachel
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $9.05
From Rachel Cusk, her first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and artRachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions.Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales
Bly, Robert
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $9.05
National Book Award-winning poet and author of the internationally best-selling Iron John, Robert Bly revisits a selection of fairy tales and examines how these enduring narratives capture the essence of human nature.Few forms of storytelling have greater power to captivate the human mind than fairy tales, but where do these tales originate from, and what do they mean? Celebrated poet and bestselling author Robert Bly has been asking these questions throughout his career. Here Bly looks at six tales that have stood the test of time and have captivated the poet for decades, from “The Six Swans” to “The Frog Prince.” Drawing on his own creative genius, and the work of a range of thinkers from Kirkegaard and Yeats to Freud and Jung, Bly turns these stories over in his mind to bring new meaning and illumination to these timeless tales.Along with illustrations of each story, the book features some of Bly's unpublished poetry, which peppers his lyric prose and offers a look inside the mind of an American master of letters in the twilight of his singular career.
The David Foster Wallace Reader
Wallace, David Foster
(Paperback)
List Price: $24.99 Sale: $8.83
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here--with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work--essays like his famous cruise-ship piece, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," excerpts from his novels The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, and The Pale King, and legendary stories like "The Depressed Person." Wallace's explorations of morality, self-consciousness, addiction, sports, love, and the many other subjects that occupied him are represented here in both fiction and nonfiction. Collected for the first time are Wallace's first published story, "The View from Planet Trillaphon as Seen In Relation to the Bad Thing" and a selection of his work as a writing instructor, including reading lists, grammar guides, and general guidelines for his students. A dozen writers and critics, including Hari Kunzru, Anne Fadiman, and Nam Le, add afterwords to favorite pieces, expanding our appreciation of the unique pleasures of Wallace's writing. The result is an astonishing volume that shows the breadth and range of "one of America's most daring and talented writers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) whose work was full of humor, insight, and beauty.
On Drinking (Large Print)
Bukowski, Charles
(Paperback)
List Price: $26.99 Sale: $8.83
The definitive collection of works on a subject that inspired and haunted Charles Bukowski for his entire life: alcohol.Charles Bukowski turns to the bottle in this revelatory collection of poetry and prose that includes some of the writer’s best and most lasting work. A self-proclaimed “dirty old man,” Bukowski used alcohol as muse and as fuel, a conflicted relationship responsible for some of his darkest moments as well as some of his most joyful and inspired.In On Drinking, Bukowski expert Abel Debritto has collected the writer’s most profound, funny, and memorable work on his ups and downs with the hard stuff—a topic that allowed Bukowski to explore some of life’s most pressing questions. Through drink, Bukowski is able to be alone, to be with people, to be a poet, a lover, and a friend—though often at great cost. As Bukowski writes in a poem simply titled “Drinking,”: “for me/it was or/is/a manner of/dying/with boots on/and gun/smoking and a/symphony music background.”On Drinking is a powerful testament to the pleasures and miseries of a life in drink, and a window into the soul of one of our most beloved and enduring writers.
The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New
Dillard, Annie
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.99 Sale: $8.40
In recognition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s long and lauded career as a master essayist, a landmark collection, including her most beloved pieces and some rarely seen work, rigorously curated by the author herself.
Aphrodite
Allende, Isabel
(Softcover)
List Price: $19.95 Sale: $8.40
"Like a slow, seductive lover, Allende teases, tempts and titillates with mesmerizing stories and legends about gluttony-sexual and otherwise."-Washington Post.
Coventry: Essays
Cusk, Rachel
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.99 Sale: $8.40
From Rachel Cusk, her first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and artRachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions.Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
The End of the End of the Earth
Franzen, Jonathan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $8.40
The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like “a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them.” For the past twenty-five years, even as his novels have earned him worldwide acclaim, Franzen has led a second life as a risk-taking essayist. Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calamities, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us to more humane ways of being in the world.Franzen’s great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one’s prejudices, he writes, literature “invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you.” Whatever his subject, Franzen’s essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He’s frank about birds, too (they kill “everything imaginable”), but his reporting and reflections on them - on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica - are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason.
Human Relations and Other Difficulties: Essays
Wilmers, Mary-Kay
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $8.40
Mary-Kay Wilmers cofounded the London Review of Books in 1979, and has been its sole editor since 1992. Her editorial life began long before that: she started at Faber and Faber in the time of T. S. Eliot, then worked at the Listener, and then at the Times Literary Supplement. As John Lanchester says in his introduction, she has been extracting literary works from reluctant writers for more than fifty years.As well as an editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers is, and has been throughout her career, a writer. The deeply considered pieces in Human Relations and Other Difficulties, whether on Jean Rhys, Alice James, a nineteenth-century edition of the Pears’ Cyclopaedia, novel reviewing, Joan Didion, mistresses, seduction, or her own experience of parenthood, are sparkling, funny, and absorbing.Underlying all these essays is a concern with the relation between the genders: the effect men have on women, and the ways in which men limit and frame women’s lives. Wilmers holds these patterns up to cool scrutiny, and gives a crisp and sometimes cutting insight into the hard work of being a woman.
Late Essays: 2006-2017
Coetzee, J. M.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $8.40
J. M. Coetzee is not only one of the most acclaimed fiction writers in the world, he is also an accomplished and insightful literary critic. In Late Essays: 2006–2016, a thought-provoking collection of twenty-three pieces, he examines the work of some of the world’s greatest writers, from Daniel Defoe in the early eighteenth century to Goethe and Irène Némirovsky to Coetzee’s contemporary Philip Roth. Challenging yet accessible, literary master Coetzee writes these essays with great clarity and precision, offering readers an illuminating and wise analysis of a remarkable list of works of international literature that span three centuries.
Lists of Note
Usher, Shaun
(Hardcover)
List Price: $39.59 Sale: $8.40
Humans have been making lists for even longer than they've been writing letters. They are the shorthand for what really matters to us: our hopes and aspirations; likes and dislikes; rules for living and loving; records of our memories and reminders of the things we want to do before we die. Just as he did with Letters of Note, Shaun Usher has trawled the world's archives to produce a rich visual anthology that stretches from ancient times to present day. From a to-do list of Leonardo da Vinci's to Charles Darwin on the pros and cons of marriage or Julia Child's list of possible titles for what would later become an American cooking bible, Lists of Note is a constantly surprising A-Z of what makes us human. In its pages you'll find 125 lists with facsimiles or illustrations, including:1. A shopping list written by two 9th-century Tibetan monks2. A handwritten list of the BFG's favourite words by Roald Dahl3. The 19 year-old Isaac Newton's list of the 57 sins he'd already committed4. Galileo's list of parts needed to build his telescope5. Einstein's punitive list of conditions imposed on his first wife6. 29-year-old Marilyn Monroe's inspirational set of New Year's resolutions7. Martin Luther King's advice for black people starting to use buses8. Johnny Cash's list of 'things to do today'9. Michelangelo's illustrated shopping list10. Advice for 'chick rockers' by Chrissie HyndeAnd many, many more...
Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files
Handlen, Zack
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $8.40
In Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files, TV critics Zack Handlen and Emily Todd VanDerWerff look back at exactly what made the long-running cult series so groundbreaking. Packed with insightful reviews of every episode—including the tenth and eleventh seasons and both major motion pictures—Monsters of the Week leaves no mystery unsolved and no monster unexplained. This crucial collection includes a foreword by series creator Chris Carter as well as exclusive interviews with some of show’s stars and screenwriters, including Carter, Vince Gilligan, Mitch Pileggi, James Wong, Robert Patrick, Darin Morgan, and more. Monsters of the Week is the definitive guide to The X-Files—whether you’re a lifelong viewer or a new fan uncovering the conspiracy for the first time.
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $8.40
Dessa defies category--she is an intellectual with an international rap career and an inhaler in her backpack; a creative writer fascinated by philosophy and behavioral science; and a funny, charismatic performer dogged by blue moods and heartache. She's ferocious on stage and endearingly neurotic in the tour van. Her stunning literary debut memoir stitches together poignant insights on love, science, and language--a demonstration of just how far the mind can travel while the body is on a six-hour ride to the next gig. In "The Fool That Bets Against Me," Dessa writes to Geico to request a commercial insurance policy for the broken heart that's helped her write so many sad songs. "A Ringing in the Ears" tells the story of her father building a wooden airplane in their backyard garage. In "'Congratulations,'" she describes the challenge of recording a song for The Hamilton Mixtape in a Minneapolis basement, straining for a high note and hoping for a break. "Call Off Your Ghost" chronicles the fascinating project she undertook with a team of neuroscientists to try to clinically excise romantic feelings for an old flame. Her writing is infused with scientific research, dry wit, a philosophical perspective, and an abiding tenderness for the people she tours with and the people she leaves behind to be on the road.My Own Devices is an uncompromising and candid account of a life in motion, in music, and in love. Dessa is as compelling on the page as she is onstage, making My Own Devices the debut of a unique and deft literary voice.
The Patch
McPhee, John
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $8.40
The Patch is the seventh collection of essays by the nonfiction master, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It is divided into two parts.Part 1, “The Sporting Scene,” consists of pieces on fishing, football, golf, and lacrosse - from fly casting for chain pickerel in fall in New Hampshire to walking the linksland of St. Andrews at an Open Championship. Part 2, called “An Album Quilt,” is a montage of fragments of varying length from pieces done across the years that have never appeared in book form - occasional pieces, memorial pieces, reflections, reminiscences, and short items in various magazines including The New Yorker. They range from a visit to the Hershey chocolate factory to encounters with Oscar Hammerstein, Joan Baez, and Mount Denali.Emphatically, the author’s purpose was not merely to preserve things but to choose passages that might entertain contemporary readers. Starting with 250,000 words, he gradually threw out 75 percent of them, and randomly assembled the remaining fragments into “an album quilt.” Among other things, The Patch is a covert memoir.
Storm For the Living and the Dead: Uncollected and Unpublished Poems
Bukowski, Charles
(Hardcover)
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A timeless selection of some of Charles Bukowski’s best unpublished and uncollected poemsCharles Bukowski was a prolific writer who produced countless short stories, novels, and poems that have reached beyond their time and place to speak to generations of readers all over the world. Many of his poems remain little known since they appeared in small magazines but were never collected, and a large number of them have yet to be published.In Storm for the Living and the Dead, Abel Debritto has curated a collection of rare and never- before-seen material - poems from obscure, hard-to-find magazines, as well as from libraries and private collections all over the country. In doing so, Debritto has captured the essence of Bukowski’s inimitable poetic style - tough and hilarious but ringing with humanity. Storm for the Living and the Dead is a gift for any devotee of the Dirty Old Man of American letters.
Thin Places: Essays from In Between
Kisner, Jordan
(Hardcover)
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In this perceptive and provocative essay collection, an award-winning writer shares her personal and reportorial investigation into America’s search for meaningWhen Jordan Kisner was a child, she was saved by Jesus Christ at summer camp, much to the confusion of her nonreligious family. She was, she writes, “just naturally reverent,” a fact that didn’t change when she - much to her own confusion - lost her faith as a teenager. Not sure why her religious conviction had come or where it had gone, she did what anyone would do: “You go about the great American work of assigning yourself to other gods: yoga, talk radio, neoatheism, CrossFit, cleanses, football, the academy, the American Dream, Beyoncé.”A curiosity about the subtle systems guiding contemporary life pervades Kisner’s work. Her celebrated essay “Thin Places” (Best American Essays 2016), about an experimental neurosurgery developed to treat severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, asks how putting the neural touchpoint of the soul on a pacemaker may collide science and psychology with philosophical questions about illness, the limits of the self, and spiritual transformation. How should she understand the appearance of her own obsessive compulsive disorder at the very age she lost her faith?Intellectually curious and emotionally engaging, the essays in Thin Places manage to be both intimate and expansive, illuminating an unusual facet of American life, as well as how it reverberates with the author’s past and present preoccupations.
The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives (Large Print)
Pearl, Nancy
(Paperback)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $8.40
Twenty-three of today's living literary legends reveal the books that made them think, brought them joy, and changed their lives in this intimate and insightful collection that celebrates the power of literature and reading to connect us all.In this incisive and ebullient book, America's favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America's most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark.Illustrated with beautiful line drawings, The Writer’s Library is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries, and bookstores of today’s favorite authors—the creative artists whose imagination and sublime talent make America's literary scene the wonderful, dynamic world it is. A love letter to books and a celebration of wordsmiths, The Writer’s Library is a treasure for anyone who has been moved by the written word. The authors in The Writer’s Library are:• Russell Banks• TC Boyle• Michael Chabon• Susan Choi• Jennifer Egan• Dave Eggers• Louise Erdrich• Richard Ford• Laurie Frankel• Andrew Sean Greer• Jane Hirshfield• Siri Hustvedt• Charles Johnson• Laila Lalami• Jonathan Lethem• Donna Tartt• Madeline Miller• Viet Thanh Nguyen• Luis Alberto Urrea• Vendela Vida• Ayelet Waldman• Maaza Mengiste• Amor Towles
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Klosterman, Chuck
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $8.11
Chuck Klosterman has created an incomparable body of work in books, magazines, newspapers, and on the Web. His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped found and establish Grantland, served as the New York Times Magazine Ethicist, worked on film and television productions, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and The Guardian.Chuck Klosterman's tenth book (aka Chuck Klosterman X) collects his most intriguing of those pieces, accompanied by fresh introductions and new footnotes throughout. Klosterman presents many of the articles in their original form, featuring previously unpublished passages and digressions. Subjects include Breaking Bad, Lou Reed, zombies, KISS, Jimmy Page, Stephen Malkmus, steroids, Mountain Dew, Chinese Democracy, The Beatles, Jonathan Franzen, Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, Usain Bolt, Eddie Van Halen, Charlie Brown, the Cleveland Browns, and many more cultural figures and pop phenomena. This is a tour of the past decade from one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.
Busted in New York and Other Essays
Pinckney, Darryl
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $7.81
A collection of essays that blend the personal and the social, from the celebrated literary critic and novelistIn these twenty-five essays, Darryl Pinckney has given us a view of our recent racial history that blends the social and the personal and wonders how we arrived at our current moment. Pinckney reminds us that "white supremacy isn’t back; it never went away." It is this impulse to see historically that is at the core of Busted in New York and Other Essays, which traces the lineage of black intellectual history from Booker T. Washington through the Harlem Renaissance, to the Black Panther Party and the turbulent sixties, to today’s Afro-pessimists, and celebrated and neglected thinkers in between.These are capacious essays whose topics range from the grassroots of protest in Ferguson, Missouri, to the eighteenth-century Guadeloupian composer Joseph Bologne, from an unsparing portrait of Louis Farrakhan to the enduring legacy of James Baldwin, the unexpected story of black people experiencing Russia, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, and the painter Kara Walker. The essays themselves are a kind of record, many of them written in real-time, as Pinckney witnesses the Million Man March, feels and experiences the highs and lows of Obama’s first presidential campaign, explores the literary black diaspora, and reflects on the surprising and severe lesson he learned firsthand about the changing urban fabric of New York.As Zadie Smith writes in her introduction to the book: "How lucky we are to have Darryl Pinckney who, without rancor, without insult, has, all these years, been taking down our various songs, examining them with love and care, and bringing them back from the past, like a Sankofa bird, for our present examination. These days Sankofas like Darryl are rare. Treasure him!"
Can You Tolerate This?
Young, Ashleigh
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $7.81
A dazzling - and already prizewinning - collection of essays on youth and aging, ambition and disappointment, Katherine Mansfield tourism and New Zealand punk rock, and the limitations of the body. Youth and frailty, ambition and anxiety, the limitations of the body and the challenges of personal transformation: these are the undercurrents that animate acclaimed poet Ashleigh Young's first collection of essays. In Can You Tolerate This?--the title comes from the question chiropractors ask to test a patient's pain threshold--Young ushers us into her early years in the faraway yet familiar landscape of New Zealand: fantasizing about Paul McCartney, cheering on her older brother's fledging music career, and yearning for a larger and more creative life. As Young's perspective expands, a series of historical portraits--a boy who grew new bone wherever he was injured, an early French postman who built a stone fortress by hand, a generation of Japanese shut-ins--strike unexpected personal harmonies, as an unselfconscious childhood gives way to painful shyness in adolescence. As we watch Young fall in and out of love, undertake an intense yoga practice that masks an eating disorder, and gradually find herself through her writing, a highly particular psyche comes into view: curious, tender, and exacting in her observations of herself and the world around her. Can You Tolerate This? presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions--between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation--that define our lives.
Chroniques: Selected Columns, 2010-2016
Daoud, Kamel
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.95 Sale: $7.81
This engaging collection of essays showcases the extraordinary passion, insight, and range of Kamel Daoud, bestselling author of The Meursault Investigation.Kamel Daoud has been a journalist for more than twenty years, writing the most-read column in Algeria, in Le Quotidien d'Oran, while also collaborating on various online media and contributing to foreign publications such as the New York Times. During the 2010-2016 period, he put his name to almost two thousand texts--first intended for the Algerian public, then read more and more throughout the world as his reputation grew.Whether he is criticizing political Islam or the decline of the Algerian regime, embracing the hope kindled by Arab revolutions or defending women's rights, Daoud does so in his own inimitable style: at once poetic and provocative, he captures his devoted followers with fresh, counterintuitive arguments about the nature of humanity, religion, and liberty.
The Good Bohemian: The Letters of Ida John
Holroyd, Michael (Edt)
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $7.81
Captivatingly fresh and intimate letters from Augustus John's first wife, Ida, reveal the untold story of married life with one of the great artists of the last century.Twelve days before her twenty-fourth birthday, on the foggy morning of Saturday 12 January 1901, Ida Nettleship married Augustus John in a private ceremony at St Pancras Registry Office. The union went against the wishes of Ida's parents, who aspired to an altogether more conventional match for their eldest daughter. But Ida was in love with Augustus, a man of exceptional magnetism also studying at the Slade, and who would become one of the most famous artists of his time.Ida's letters – to friends, to family and to Augustus – reveal a young woman of passion, intensity and wit. They tell of the scandal she brought on the Nettleship family and its consequences; of hurt and betrayal as the marriage evolved into a three-way affair when Augustus fell in love with another woman, Dorelia; of Ida's remarkable acceptance of Dorelia, their pregnancies and shared domesticity; of self-doubt, happiness and despair; and of finding the strength and courage to compromise and navigate her unorthodox marriage.Ida is a naturally gifted writer, and it is with a candour, intimacy and social intelligence extraordinary for a woman of her period that her correspondence opens up her world. Ida John died aged just thirty of puerperal fever following the birth of her fifth son, but in these vivid, funny and sometimes devastatingly sad letters she is startlingly alive on the page; a young woman ahead of her time – almost of our own time – living a complex and compelling drama here revealed for the first time by the woman at its very heart.
The Great American Read: The Book of Books - Explore America's 100 Best-Loved Novels
Allen, Jessica
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $7.81
A blockbuster illustrated book that captures what Americans love to read, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is the gorgeously-produced companion book to PBS's ambitious summer 2018 series.What are America's best-loved novels? PBS will launch The Great American Read series with a 2-hour special in May 2018 revealing America's 100 best-loved novels, determined by a rigorous national survey. Subsequent episodes will air in September and October. Celebrities and everyday Americans will champion their favorite novel and in the finale in late October, America's #1 best-loved novel will be revealed.The Great American Read: The Book of Books will present all 100 novels with fascinating information about each book, author profiles, a snapshot of the novel's social relevance, film or television adaptations, other books and writings by the author, and little-known facts. Also included are themed articles about banned books, the most influential book illustrators, reading recommendations, the best first-lines in literature, and more.Beautifully designed with rare images of the original manuscripts, first-edition covers, rejection letters, and other ephemera, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is a must-have book for all booklovers.
One Hundred Daffodils: Finding Beauty, Grace, and Meaning When Things Fall Apart
Winn, Rebecca
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $7.81
When her husband asked for a divorce after twenty-five years of marriage, Rebecca Winn felt untethered physically, spiritually, and emotionally. The security she'd had in her marriage was suddenly replaced by an overwhelming sense of fear, hopelessness, and dread. She felt invisible and alone and was horrified to consider that her deepest longing -- to know and be known by another person -- might never be realized. But from this fear emerged a powerful desire to answer one of life's most profound questions: How can we ever know another person if we do not truly know ourselves?Facilitated in measures by a love affair with a younger man, dedicated study of Jungian psychology, and a deep dive into global spiritual practices, Winn transformed heartbreak into wholeness through communion with the divine in nature. By turning to her garden for guidance, sanctuary, and inspiration, and dialing closely into the flora and fauna around her, she ultimately discovered what is possible when we are willing look at our unvarnished selves with an open mind -- and see others with an open heart.
Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work form 1970 to the Present
Williford, Lex (Edt)
(Paperback)
List Price: $21.00 Sale: $7.81
From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism - this unique, indispensable anthology brings together fifty unforgettable works from all genres of creative nonfiction. Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970.
Arguably: Essays
Hitchens, Christopher
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $7.64
For nearly four decades, Hitchens showed readers how to grapple with the principles of reason, tolerance, and skepticism that define the formations of civilization. Legions of readers, admirers and detractors alike, have learned to read Hitchens with awe at his felicity of language, his enviable wit, and his readiness.
The Art of the Personal Essay
Lopate, Phillip
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.95 Sale: $7.64
The first anthology devoted to the literary form known as the personal essay. A compilation of more than 60 selections by such masters as Plutarch, Montaigne, Orwell, Baldwin, Tanizaki, and Woolf, as well as contemporary personal essayists from throughout the world.
Old Age: A Beginner's Guide
Kinsley, Michael
(Hardcover)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $7.64
Vanity Fair columnist Michael Kinsley escorts his fellow Boomers through the door marked "Exit." The notorious baby boomers--the largest age cohort in history--are approaching the end and starting to plan their final moves in the game of life. Now they are asking: What was that all about? Was it about acquiring things or changing the world? Was it about keeping all your marbles? Or is the only thing that counts after you're gone the reputation you leave behind? In this series of essays, Michael Kinsley uses his own battle with Parkinson's disease to unearth answers to questions we are all at some time forced to confront. "Sometimes," he writes, "I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest Boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies, or eighties." This surprisingly cheerful book is at once a fresh assessment of a generation and a frequently funny account of one man's journey toward the finish line. "The least misfortune can do to make up for itself is to be interesting," he writes. "Parkinson's disease has fulfilled that obligation."
The Portable Oscar Wilde (Viking Portable Library)
Aldington, Richard (Edt)
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $7.64
In this marvelously inclusive anthology, Richard Aldington and Stanley Weintraub present the most quotable and influential of Wilde's writings. The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and the plays Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest are included here in their entirety, along with the complete, unexpurgated text of the prison memoir De Profundis. In addition, there are selections from the comedies Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband; reviews, poems, fairy tales that Wilde originally wrote for his children, the dialogue "The Critic as Artist," letters, and the sardonic manifesto "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young." 741 pages.
And Yet...
Hitchens, Christopher
(Paperback)
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The seminal, uncollected essays by the late Christopher Hitchens, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller God Is Not Great, showcase the notorious contrarian’s genius for rhetoric and his sharp rebukes to tyrants and the ill-informed everywhere.
Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Li, Yiyun
(Hardcover)
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Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living.Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter - and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Søren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together.Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write? And why live?
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
Jackson, R. Bryer (Edt)
(Paperback)
List Price: $22.00 Sale: $7.47
Through his alcoholism and her mental illness, his career highs (and lows) and her institutional confinement, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's devotion to each other endured for more than twenty-two years. Now the love story of these two glamorous and hugely talented writers can be read in their own words. This is a stunning collection of letters chronicling one of the twentieth century's most passionate and legendary romances.
John Updike: Selected Poems
Updike, John
(Paperback)
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Though John Updike is widely known as one of America’s greatest writers of prose, both his first book and his last were poetry collections, and in the fifty years between he published six other volumes of verse. Now, six years after his death, Christopher Carduff has selected the best from Updike’s lifework in poetry: 129 witty and intimate poems that, when read together in the order of their composition, take on the quality of an unfolding verse-diary.
My Life as a Villainess: Essays (Large Print)
Lippman, Laura
(Paperback)
List Price: $21.99 Sale: $7.47
New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman, a journalist for many years, collects here her recent essays exploring motherhood as an older mom, her life as a reader, her relationships with her parents, friendship, and other topics that will resonate with a large audience. Her voice is wry and relatable, her takes often surprising.
Nobody's Looking at You
Malcolm, Janet
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $7.47
Janet Malcolm’s previous collection, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, was “unmistakably the work of a master” (The New York Times Book Review). Like Forty-One False Starts, Nobody’s Looking at You brings together previously uncompiled pieces, mainly from The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.The title piece of this wonderfully eclectic collection is a profile of the fashion designer Eileen Fisher, whose mother often said to her, “Nobody’s looking at you.” But in every piece in this volume, Malcolm looks closely and with impunity at a broad range of subjects, from Donald Trump’s TV nemesis Rachel Maddow, to the stiletto-heel-wearing pianist Yuju Wang, to “the big-league game” of Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In an essay called “Socks,” the Pevears are seen as the “sort of asteroid [that] has hit the safe world of Russian Literature in English translation,” and in “Dreams and Anna Karenina,” the focus is Tolstoy, “one of literature’s greatest masters of manipulative techniques.” Nobody’s Looking at You concludes with “Pandora’s Click,” a brief, cautionary piece about e-mail etiquette that was written in the early two thousands, and that reverberates - albeit painfully - to this day.
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
Steinem, Gloria
(Paperback)
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Gloria Steinem's classic essay collection, now with updated and new material, reminds us how far we have come in the fight for gender equality, and where our rebellion is still desperately needed.
The Portable Chaucer (Viking Portable Library, Revised Edition)
Morrison, Theodore
(Paperback)
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Both The Canterbury Tales, and, Troilus and Cressida are presented complete in this anthology, in fresh modern translations by Theodore Morrison that convey both the gravity and gaiety of the Middle English originals. The Portable Chaucer also contains selections from The Book of Duchess, The House of Fame, The Bird's Parliament, and The Legend of Good Women, together with short poems. Morrison's introduction is vital for its insights into Chaucer as man and artist, and as a product of the Middle Ages whose shrewdness, humor, and compassion have a wonderfully contemporary ring.
The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
Shapiro, James
(Paperback)
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In the years leading up to 1606, Shakespeare’s great productivity had ebbed. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn - King Lear - then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.It was a memorable year in England as well - a terrorist plot conceived by a small group of Catholic gentry had been uncovered at the last hour. The foiled Gunpowder Plot would have blown up the king and royal family along with the nation’s political and religious leadership. The aborted plot renewed anti-Catholic sentiment and laid bare divisions in the kingdom.It was against this background that Shakespeare finished Lear, a play about a divided kingdom, then wrote a tragedy that turned on the murder of a Scottish king, Macbeth. He ended this astonishing year with a third masterpiece no less steeped in current events and concerns: Antony and Cleopatra.“Exciting and sometimes revelatory, in The Year of Lear, James Shapiro takes a closer look at the political and social turmoil that contributed to the creation of three supreme masterpieces” (The Washington Post). He places them in the context of their times, while also allowing us greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions. “His great gift is to make the plays seem at once more comprehensible and more staggering” (The New York Review of Books). For anyone interested in Shakespeare, this is an indispensable book.
The New Negro
Locke, Alain
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $7.21
An interpretative anthology that acted as a manifesto for the Harlem Renaissance defines the artistic and social goals of the New Negro Movement of the 1920s.
Nobody's Looking at You: Essays
Malcolm, Janet
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $7.21
Janet Malcolm’s previous collection, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, was “unmistakably the work of a master” (The New York Times Book Review). Like Forty-One False Starts, Nobody’s Looking at You brings together previously uncompiled pieces, mainly from The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.The title piece of this wonderfully eclectic collection is a profile of the fashion designer Eileen Fisher, whose mother often said to her, “Nobody’s looking at you.” But in every piece in this volume, Malcolm looks closely and with impunity at a broad range of subjects, from Donald Trump’s TV nemesis Rachel Maddow, to the stiletto-heel-wearing pianist Yuju Wang, to “the big-league game” of Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In an essay called “Socks,” the Pevears are seen as the “sort of asteroid [that] has hit the safe world of Russian Literature in English translation,” and in “Dreams and Anna Karenina,” the focus is Tolstoy, “one of literature’s greatest masters of manipulative techniques.” Nobody’s Looking at You concludes with “Pandora’s Click,” a brief, cautionary piece about e-mail etiquette that was written in the early two thousands, and that reverberates - albeit painfully - to this day.
Winter
Knausgaard, Karl Ove
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $7.21
The second volume in his autobiographical quartet based on the seasons, Winter is an achingly beautiful collection of daily meditations and letters addressed directly to Knaugsaard's unborn daughter.
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
Hustvedt, Siri
(Paperback)
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In a trilogy of works brought together in a single volume, Siri Hustvedt demonstrates the striking range and depth of her knowledge in both the humanities and the sciences. Armed with passionate curiosity, a sense of humor, and insights from many disciplines she repeatedly upends received ideas and cultural truisms.“A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women” (which provided the title of this book) examines particular artworks but also human perception itself, including the biases that influence how we judge art, literature, and the world. Picasso, de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer, Susan Sontag, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Karl Ove Knausgaard all come under Hustvedt’s intense scrutiny. “The Delusions of Certainty” exposes how the age-old, unresolved mind-body problem has shaped and often distorted and confused contemporary thought in neuroscience, psychiatry, genetics, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary psychology. “What Are We? Lectures on the Human Condition” includes a powerful reading of Kierkegaard, a trenchant analysis of suicide, and penetrating reflections on the mysteries of hysteria, synesthesia, memory and space, and the philosophical dilemmas of fiction.
Letters of C. S. Lewis
Lewis, C. S.
(Paperback)
List Price: $19.99 Sale: $6.96
A repackaged edition of the revered author’s collection of personal letters - a curated selection of the best of his correspondence with family, friends, and fans - and a short biography by his brother Warren Lewis.Letters of C. S. Lewis reveals the most intimate beliefs of the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics. Written to friends, family, and fans at various stages in his life, from his youth to the weeks before his death, these letters illuminate Lewis’s thoughts on God, humanity, nature, and creativity. In this captivating collection, devotees will discover details about Lewis’s conversion from atheism to Christianity as well as his philosophical thoughts on spirituality and personal faith.
On Democracy
White, E. B.
(Paperback)
List Price: $24.99 Sale: $6.96
"I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear."These words were written by E. B. White in 1947.Decades before our current political turmoil, White crafted eloquent yet practical political statements that continue to resonate. "There’s only one kind of press that’s any good", he proclaimed, "a press free from any taint of the government." He condemned the trend of defamation, arguing that "in doubtful, doubting days, national morality tends to slip and slide toward a condition in which the test of a man’s honor is his zeal for discovering dishonor in others." And on the spread of fascism he lamented, "fascism enjoys at the moment an almost perfect climate for growth - a world of fear and hunger."Anchored by an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, this concise collection of essays, letters, and poems from one of this country’s most eminent literary voices offers much-needed historical context for our current state of the nation - and hope for the future of our society. Speaking to Americans at a time of uncertainty, when democracy itself has come under threat, he reminds us, "As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman . . . the scene is not desolate."
Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone
Salami, Minna
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.99 Sale: $6.96
A collection of thought-provoking essays shaped by an Africa-centered feminist sensibility.
Short Stories in Japanese
Emmerich, Michael (Edit)
(Paperback)
List Price: $20.00 Sale: $6.96
Announcing the first expansion in more than 40 years of the venerable New Penguin Parallel Text series. Here is the perfect introduction to contemporary Japanese fiction. Featuring many stories appearing in English for the first time, this collection, with parallel translations, offers students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature without having to constantly consult a dictionary. Richly diverse in themes and styles, the stories are by well-known writers-like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto-as well as by emerging voices. Complete with notes, these selections make excellent reading in either language.
There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction
Bellow, Saul
(Paperback)
List Price: $22.00 Sale: $6.96
Arranged chronologically, this literary time capsule displays the full extent of Bellow's nonfiction, including criticism, interviews, speeches and other reflections, tracing his career from his initial success as a novelist until the end of his life. Bringing together six classic pieces with an abundance of previously uncollected material, There is Simply Too Much to Think About is a powerful reminder not only of Bellow's genius but also of his enduring place in the western canon. It is sure to be widely reviewed and talked about for years to come.
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