An NBCC Award and Los Angeles Times Book Award finalistA New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was...

National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistA New York Times Notable BookA Best Book of the Year —Austin American-StatesmanIncludes a new, previously uncollected piece: "My Internet"In The Ecstasy of Influence, the incomparable Jonathan Lethem has...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Anna Quindlen presents a “swift and compelling paean to the joys of books” (Booklist).“Like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, [How Reading Changed My Life] is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary, and a...

John Updike’s first collection of nonfiction pieces, published in 1965 when the author was thirty-three, is a diverting and illuminating gambol through midcentury America and the writer’s youth. It opens with a choice selection of parodies, casuals, and...

Why should we be good? How should we be good? And how might we more deeply understand the moral and ethical failings--splashed across today's headlines--that have not only destroyed individual lives but caused widespread calamity as well, bringing...

E. M. Forster's guide sparkles with wit and insight for contemporary writers and readers. With lively language and excerpts from well-known classics, Forster (author of A Passage to India, Howards End, and A Room With a View) takes on the seven elements...

This book unites the disciplines of literature and history in an attempt to set the writings of Andrew Marvell in their seventeenth-century context of revolutionary upheaval and counter-revolution. Marvell is seen as a representative figure, illustrating...

From “one of America’s most significant young poets” (Lyn Hejinian), an exceptional book of nonfiction and fables that provides a walking tour of the creative mind.In Wonderful Investigations, Dan Beachy-Quick broaches “a hazy line, a faulty boundary”...

"This is criticism at its best." ―Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles TimesWriting in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and...

A decade ago in the Times Literary Supplement, Roderick Conway Morris claimed that “almost everything that was going to happen in book publishing―from pocket books, instant books and pirated books, to the concept of author’s copyright, company mergers,...

New York holds a special place in America's national mythology as both the gateway to the USA and as a diverse, vibrant cultural center distinct from the rest of the nation. From the international atmosphere of the Dutch colony New Amsterdam, through the...

“One of the most significant literary personalities in the world.”—Italo Calvino   Georges Perec, author of the highly acclaimed Life: A User’s Manual, was only forty-six when he died in 1982. Despite a tragic childhood, during which his mother was...

She felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after all that chatter, and pick out one particular thing; the thing that mattered . . .—Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse An illuminating exploration of how seven of the greatest English novels...

"Unlike Freud, I do not claim that religion is just an illusion and a source of neurosis. The time has come to recognize, without being afraid of 'frightening' either the faithful or the agnostics, that the history of Christianity prepared the world for...

A manual to show practicing physicians and medical students how to make use of short stories to help their patients adapt to their illnesses and participate in their treatment. For most people, the quickest route to wisdom, other than experience, is...

Current global tensions and the spread of terrorism have resurrected in the West a largely negative perception of Islamic society, an ill will fueled by centuries of conflict and prejudice. Shedding light on the history behind these hostile feelings,...

An unforgettable, illuminating story of how men live and how they survive, from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes...

A literary gem – a portrait from life of Franz Kafka – now with an ardent preface by Francine Prose, avowed “fan of Janouch’s odd and beautiful book.” Gustav Janouch met Franz Kafka, the celebrated author of The Metamorphosis, as a seventeen-year-old...

“I don’t know why we do it. We must be crazy./Welcome, fellow poet.”―Richard Hugo Richard Hugo, whom Carolyn Kizer called “one of the most passionate, energetic and honest poets living,” was that rare phenomenon―a distinguished poet who was also an...