[This book] occupies a place of unique importance in the history of Western thinking about man in society. It is a key text not only within the development of linguistics but also in the formation of that broader intellectual movement of the twentieth...

First published in 1930, Seven Types of Ambiguity has long been recognized as a landmark in the history of English literary criticism. Revised twice since it first appeared, it has remained one of the most widely read and quoted works of literary...

In 1919 Sylvia Beach "opened an American bookshop in Paris called Shakespeare and Company. During the following two decades it became practically a clearing house for writers of this vital post-1918 period".-San Francisco Chronicle. "[Miss...

Fredric Jameson, in The Political Unconscious, opposes the view that literary creation can take place in isolation from its political context. He asserts the priority of the political interpretation of literary texts, claiming it to be at the center of...

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.” —Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable FeastErnest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s remains one of his most beloved works...

In the vein of Lebowitz's acclaimed Netflix limited series, Pretend It's a City—The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together two of the famed author's bestsellers, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies.In "elegant, finely honed prose" (The Washington Post...

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • "A tough-minded, beautifully written memoir" (San Francisco Chronicle) about a son watching his elderly father battle with the brain tumor that will kill him—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of...

Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell...

From one of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of the twentieth century comes a collection of "passionate, probing, controversial" essays (The Atlantic) on topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society...

Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by...

"This collection, a retrospective exhibit of the work of a woman who created a unique place for herself in the world of letters, contains a sample of practically every period and every manner in Gertrude Stein's career. It includes The Autobiography of...

Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.

With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material. A CNN Book of the Week: “Explains not just why we should...

This book makes several claims which ought to be stated at the outset: that Herman Melville is a recorder and interpreter of American society whose work is comparable to that of the great nineteenth-century European realists; that there was crisis of...

Edited and annotated by H.L.M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books—the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of...

Critical/biographical portraits of such notable figures as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Ambrose Bierce, Mary Chesnut, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Oliver Wendell Holmes prove Wilson to be the consummate witness to the most...

In this, her bestselling journal, May Sarton writes with keen observation and emotional courage of both inner and outer worlds: a garden, the seasons, daily life in New Hampshire, books, people, ideas―and throughout everything, her spiritual and artistic...

For more than four hundred years, the personal  essay has been one of the richest and most vibrant  of all literary forms. Distinguished from the  detached formal essay by its friendly, conversational  tone, its loose structure, and its drive...

In this autobiography, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental and universal loss of innocence that occurred as a result of the First World War. Written after the war and as he was leaving his birthplace, he thought, forever,...