Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic...

Susan Orlean’s bestseller, New York Times Notable Book, and Reese’s Book Club Pick is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” (USA TODAY)—a dazzling love letter to a beloved...

Tragedy Walks the Streets challenges the conventional understanding that the evolution of European drama effectively came to a halt during France's Revolutionary era. In this interdisciplinary history on the emergence of modern drama in European culture,...

How black writers’ travel to Paris contributed to the transatlantic circulation of art and ideas.Paris has always fascinated and welcomed writers. Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, writers of American, Caribbean, and African...

From the author of the definitive biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, never-before-published lectures that provide an accessible introduction to the Russian writer's major worksJoseph Frank (1918–2013) was perhaps the most important Dostoevsky biographer,...

Literary studies in the postwar era have consistently barred attributing specific intentions to authors based on textual evidence or ascribing textual presences to the authors themselves. Obscure Invitations argues that this taboo has blinded us to...

New feminist essays for the #MeToo era from the international best-selling author of Men Explain Things to Me. Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle royale over that foundational power, one in which women, people...

A historian and Bram Stoker Award nominee traces the birth of modern horror movies and literature back to World War I, exploring how the conflict influenced H.P. Lovecraft, Franz Kafka, and other artists of the genre. From Nosferatu to Frankenstein’s...

For word nerds, language loons, and grammar geeks, an impassioned and informative literary leap into the wonders of the Greek language. Here are nine ways Greek can transform your relationship to time and to those around you, nine reflections on the...

Boitani's presentation of the classics is as entertaining and unexpected as it is informative. He invites the reader to discover the timeless beauty and wisdomof ancient literature, highlighting its profound and surprising connections to the present...

Available in a new edition and with an introduction by Margaret Atwood, Payback delivers a surprising look at the topic of "debt" -- a subject that continues to be timely. Legendary novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood delivers a surprising look...

"A classic of the genre."--New York Times The 30th anniversary edition of Tobias Wolff's "extraordinary memoir" (SF Chronicle), now with a new introduction by the author. Thirty years ago Tobias Wolff wrote a memoir that changed the form. The...

A collection of essays on life and literature, from one of the most iconic authors and astute critics in contemporary letters.Words Are My Matter is essential reading: a collection of talks, essays, and criticism by Ursula K. Le Guin, a literary legend...

Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character...

People in the Middle Ages had chantry chapels, mortuary rolls, the daily observance of the Office of the Dead, and even purgatory—but they were still unable to talk about death. Their inability wasn’t due to religion, but philosophy: saying someone is...

The constant call to admit guilt amounts almost to a tyranny of confession today. We demand tell-all tales in the public dramas of the courtroom, the talk shows, and in print, as well as in the more private spaces of the confessional and the...

The book's first section is a tete-a-tete with Emma Bovary; the second traces the gestation and birth of the novel, as well as Flaubert's method, his mania for documentation, and the novel's literary sources; the third situates it in literary history...

John Bunyan was a major figure in seventeenth-century Puritan literature, and one deeply embroiled in the religious upheavals of his times. This Companion considers all his major texts, including The Pilgrim's Progress and his autobiography Grace...

The bestselling exploration of the dimensions of love, marriage, mourning, and kinship from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy.A New York Times Notable BookA New York Public Library Best Nonfiction Book of 2018What does it cost a woman to...

The Patch is an “album quilt,” an artful assortment of nonfiction writings by John McPhee that have not previously appeared in any bookThe Patch is the seventh collection of essays by the nonfiction master. It is divided into two parts. Part 1, “The...