A New York Review Books OriginalDuring the eighteenth century, from the death of Louis XIV until the Revolution, French culture set the standard for all of Europe. In Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, Russia, and Germany, among kings and queens,...

How you can enrich your life by becoming a more skillful and engaged reader of literatureWe are what we read, according to Robert DiYanni. Reading may delight us or move us; we may read for instruction or inspiration. But more than this, in reading we...

Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on...

"In this book, Meredith Martin presents a historical account of prosodic criticism and, through the example of her own research path, argues for new scholarly practices in literary studies and the humanities more broadly. Challenging the common scholarly...

The "Fresh Air" book critic investigates the enduring power of The Great Gatsby -- "The Great American Novel we all think we've read, but really haven't."Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered...

To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov’s writings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov’s life and framed...

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer (now an HBO series) comes a moving and unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity.Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet...

Warning!*This book contains the following:Unsafe use of powerful firearms in combination with explosivesCultivation of illegal cropsImpressionable minors being exposed to illicit activitiesPiloting of automobiles under impaired conditionsTransporting...

This collection of essays, which originally appeared as a book in 1962, is virtually the complete works of an editor of Commentary magazine who died, at age 37, in 1955. Long before the rise of Cultural Studies as an academic pursuit, in the pages of the...

At the turn of the last century, as routinized industrial labor made a mockery of the gospel of work, Americans increasingly sought fulfillment not on the job but in their leisure activities. This book explores the multiple and, at times, contradictory...

From the renowned author of Austerlitz (named a Top 10 Book of the 21st Century by the New York Times) comes the first English translation of his extraordinary essays on the Austrian writers who shaped his life and work.Silent Catastrophes brings...

Many worry that criticism is suffering from a crisis of authority. In a world where everyone’s a critic, what is criticism for? Since her canonical 2018 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as...

A monumental, canon-defining anthology of three centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate"Not only an education but a joy. This is a book...

Bestselling author Julian Barnes illuminates the process of how minds are changed—about politics, books, words, memories, and more—in this wise and fascinating new book.“We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater...

In Quest of the Hero makes available for a new generation of readers two key works on hero myths: Otto Rank's Myth of the Birth of the Hero and the central section of Lord Raglan's The Hero. Amplifying these is Alan Dundes's fascinating contemporary...

A career-spanning collection of inspiring, revelrous essays about art and artists Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson’s brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes, and...

Called "a feminist classic" by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review, this pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the...

Considered to be the founding father of British cultural theory, Williams was concerned throughout his life to apply a materialist and socialist analysis to all forms of culture, defined generously and inclusively as “structures of feeling.” In this...

An urgent study of Homer's Iliad, exposing the beginnings of the ecological disaster we now face and facilitating our understanding of its history "Exhilarating."--Emma Greensmith, Times Literary Supplement The roots of today's environmental...