When the actor Ted Danson appeared in blackface at a 1993 Friars Club roast, he ignited a firestorm of protest that landed him on the front pages of the newspapers, rebuked by everyone from talk show host Montel Williams to New York City's then mayor,...

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A richly illustrated analysis from one of Europe’s greatest living philosophers.In Pinocchio, Giorgio Agamben turns his keen philosopher’s eye to the famous nineteenth-century novel by Carlo Collodi. To Agamben, Pinocchio’s adventures are a kind of...

“When I say this book is a love story, I mean it is about things that cannot be gotten over—like this world, and some of the people in it.” In 1819, the poet John Keats wrote six poems that would become known as the Great Odes. Some of them—“Ode to a...

A history of how, in the mid-twentieth century, we came to believe in the concept of creativity. Named a best book of 2023 by the New Yorker and a notable book of 2023 by Behavioral Scientist.Creativity is one of American society’s signature values, but...

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"A comprehensive inquiry into the attitudes and ambitions that characterized the documentary impulse of the thirties. The subject is a large one, for it embraces (among much else) radical journalism, academic sociology, the esthetics of photography,...

One of Esquire’s best books of spring 2022An extended meditation on late style and last works from “one of our greatest living critics” (Kathryn Schulz, New York).How and when do artists and athletes know that their careers are coming to an end? What if...

Ovid’s Metamorphoses has entranced audiences for two thousand years, from Rome under Augustus to humanities classrooms today. Borrowing liberally from Greek and Roman mythology, the poem tells hundreds of stories that share one essential theme: each tale...

"A true poem," Walt Whitman proclaimed in 1852, "is the daily newspaper"--and American culture was never the same again. Like a blast of cold air in a stuffy drawing room, Whitman's campaign to give artistic representation to gritty reality shocked the...

Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill's book analyses the vast literary response to the 1926 General Strike . The Strike not only drew writers into political action but inspired literature that served to shape twentieth-century British views of class,...

Revelatory talks about art and life with internationally acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos OzIn the last years of his life, the writer Amos Oz talked regularly with Shira Hadad, who worked closely with him as the editor of his final novel, Judas. These...

Hailed by the New York Times as a book that “examines the role that argument has played throughout history and how it has shaped human existence”“An invigorating reflection on the nature and value of disagreement. . . . Sharp and taut. . . . A lesson in...

A revelatory meditation on class and consumer culture, from 2022 Nobel laureate Annie ErnauxA New Yorker Best of the Week Pick • A World Literature Today Notable Translation of 2023“Translated from the French with great intelligence and sensitivity by...

A deep history of storytelling as a civic agency, recalibrating literature’s political role for the twenty-first centuryWhy did short narrative forms like the novella, fable, and fairy tale suddenly emerge around 1800 as genres symptomatic of...

How four American cities shaped Poe's life and writingsEdgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American...

Named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time by the Modern LibraryAnne Carson’s remarkable first book about the paradoxical nature of romantic loveSince it was first published, Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson’s lyrical meditation on love in...

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in CriticismA leading trans scholar and activist explores cultural representations of gender transition in the modern periodIn Pleasure and Efficacy, Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it...