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...

Bringing together some of the figures most closely associated with Edward Said and his scholarship, Waiting for the Barbarians looks at Said the public intellectual and literary critic, and his political and intellectual legacy: the future through the...

A new history of early global literature that treats translators as active agents mediating cultures.In this book, Zrinka Stahuljak challenges scholars in both medieval and translation studies to rethink how ideas and texts circulated in the medieval...

#1 New York Times BestsellerA 2025 best book of the year so far by The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, and more“Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDWINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAROne of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best...

A celebration of the beauty and mystery of language and how it shapes our lives, our loves, and our world.If there is one feature that defines the human condition, it is language: written, spoken, signed, understood, and misunderstood, in all its...

Joan Didion opened The White Album (1979) with what would become one of the most iconic lines in American literature: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Today, this phrase is deployed inspirationally, printed on T-shirts and posters, used as a...

John Guillory considers close reading within the larger history of reading and writing as cultural techniques. At a time of debate about the future of "English" as a discipline and the fundamental methods of literary study, few terms appear more...

An education in a portmanteau: George Steiner at The New Yorker collects his best work from his more than 150 pieces for the magazine. Between 1967 and 1997, George Steiner wrote more than 130 pieces on a great range of topics for The New Yorker, making...

The first general nonfiction title in thirty years from a giant of American letters, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive collection of Jim Harrison's essays and journalism--some never before published New York Times-bestselling author...

Kirkus (STARRED review)"Churchwell... has written an excellent book... she’s earned the right to play on [Fitzgerald's] court. Prodigious research and fierce affection illumine every remarkable page.”The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the...

Young Eliot: From St. Louis to “The Waste Land” was hailed as “exceptional” and “assiduous” (The New York Times). Robert Crawford’s meticulous, incisive scholarship continues in Eliot After “The Waste Land”, an invaluable record of the revolutionary...

A pithy and brilliant introduction to Susan Sontag’s writing on women, gathering early essays on aging, equality, beauty, sexuality, and fascism Susan Sontag was one of the most formidable, original, and influential thinkers of the last century. “The...