An exhaustive study of satire in the long eighteenth century.Outstanding Academic Title, ChoiceIn The Practice of Satire in England, 1658–1770, Ashley Marshall explores how satire was conceived and understood by writers and readers of the period. Her...

A major collection of essays on the novel.Michael McKeon, author of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, here assembles a collection of influential essays on the theory of the novel. Carefully chosen selections from Frye, Benjamin, Lévi-Strauss,...

A keen, ardent celebration of unbridled female ambition in the work of Taylor Swift and Sylvia PlathIn The Slicks, Maggie Nelson positions culture-dominating pop superstar Taylor Swift and feminist cult icon Sylvia Plath as twin hosts of the female urge...

In White's view, beyond the surface level of the historical text, there is a deep structural, or latent, content that is generally poetic and specifically linguistic in nature. This deeper content - the metahistorical element - indicates what an...

A quietly powerful exploration of memory and forgetting, from one of France's leading feminist public intellectuals In 2021, the award‑winning French writer Lola Lafon was granted permission to stay overnight--alone for ten hours--in the Annex in...

An NPR Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2025 A revealing exploration of a quarter century of cultural stagnation, examining the commercial and technological forces that have come to dominate contemporary culture—from music and fashion to art, film, TV, and...

One of the Washington Post’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 | A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | A Boston Globe Best Book of 2024“Ambitious, intelligent, and happily unpretentious.” —Louis Menand, The New Yorker“Convincing, idiosyncratic...

The first ever collection of John Edgar Wideman’s most influential essays and articles, five decades of cultural and literary criticism that paint a vivid portrait of America’s changing landscape and chronicle the emergence and evolution of a major...

We embraced the mediated life--from Facetune and Venmo to meme culture and the Metaverse--because these technologies offer novelty and convenience. But they also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real. What are the...

A radiant new memoir from artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award winner Just Kids“God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper,” writes Patti Smith in this moving account of her life. A post–World War II childhood unfolds in a...

The difficulty of Jacques Lacan's thought is notorious. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan cuts through this difficulty to provide a clear, jargon-free approach to understanding it. The book describes Lacan's life, the context from which he...

"Enlightening and enthusiastic." —Ed Simon, The New York Times Book ReviewNow in paperback, a highly original hybrid of literary criticism and political history, telling of the enduring, surprising and ever-evolving relevance of Milton’s epic poem...

A compelling new reading of The Tragedy of King Lear that finds parallels in twentieth-century Chinese historyAt the start of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, King Lear promises to divide his kingdom based on his daughters’ professions of love, but portions...

USA TODAY BESTSELLER A liberatory anthology of twenty-seven writers—a community in book form—charting paths ahead for action and care in the face of political uncertainty, curated by Maggie Smith and Saeed Jones. Inspired by Saeed Jones and Maggie...

From a writer who has "invented a new form" (Annie Ernaux), an exploration of mortality, alienation, boredom, surveillance, and how we regard ourselves among the animals. Animal Stories begins with Kate Zambreno's visit to the monkey house at the Jardin...