“Lockwood has written a roving chronicle of the madness of illness and the frightening porousness of what it means to be yourself in the hilariously profound way that only she could.” – Vulture“Reliably brilliant.” – The Washington...

A chilling documentary history of the most notorious cults of the past two thousand years, from the Celtic druids whose ritual sacrifices inspired the folk horror film The Wicker Man all the way up to the Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate A Penguin...

June 1940: France surrenders to Germany. The Gestapo is searching for Heinrich Mann and Franz Werfel, Hannah Arendt, Lion Feuchtwanger and many other writers and artists who had sought asylum in France since 1933. The young American journalist Varian Fry...

“For anyone wanting to find out more about the world we live in . . . there is one simple answer: read Noam Chomsky.” —The New StatesmanA sharp indictment of both American foreign policy and the national myths that support it, and an urgent warning of...

A longtime educator explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race, nation, and the stories we tell about who we are. Black history is under attack from powerful forces that seek to excise it from classrooms, libraries, and...

How a force that’s hard to name, but which we all feel, is reshaping what it means to be humanIn Against the Machine, “furiously gifted” (The Washington Post) novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth presents a wholly original—and terrifying—account...

A radical revision—and worker’s-eye view—of everything we thought we knew about the ancient Roman economyThe story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. Surviving Rome unearths another history, one of ordinary Romans, who...

A New York Times Notable Book A shocking and assiduously reported biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker whose techno-authoritarian worldview is coming to dominate...

A user’s guide to the fundamental practice of literary studies, providing context, examples, and practical exercises Close reading—making an argument based in close attention to a text—is the foundation of literary studies. This book offers a guide to...

In this posthumous collection of thought-provoking essays—many never published before—Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and bestselling author David McCullough affirms the value of history, how we can be guided by its lessons, and the enduring legacy of...

The author of Call Me by Your Name returns with a deeply romantic memoir of his time in Rome while on the cusp of adulthood.In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after...

Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal...

"Published posthumously in 1924, the novella Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) remains one of Herman Melville's most compelling works of fiction. The richness of its text has yielded myriad interpretations of its subtext, and this tale of a trial...

The globetrotting story of how humans have harnessed the geographical landscape and written ourselves onto our surroundings. Mountains, meridians, rivers, and borders--these are some of the features that divide the world on our maps and in our minds...

"This wholly original book provides the untold history of punishment inside prisons. Legal scholar Judith Resnik charts the invention of the corrections profession that imposed radical restrictions on human movement as if doing so was normal. She weaves...

"From global navigation to natal charts and from memory palaces to particle accelerators, a fascinating account of humanity's attempts to imagine new spaces. How do you conceive of space? To start, reflect of how many spatial terms appear in your...

The story of the German exiles--and cultural titans--who settled in Pacific Palisades and influenced American culture. In the early twentieth century, Pacific Palisades was home to America's most modern film studio of the time as well as the proposed...

Celebrating the short, witty, philosophical phrases known as aphorisms, this delightful history is an entertaining tour through the wisest and wittiest sayings in the world. Aphorisms are literature's hand luggage. Light and compact, they contain...

The dramatic story of America’s greatest Indian war told from perspective of the Lakotas and the Northern Cheyennes, as they fight for their way of life on the buffalo prairie.In this deeply affecting account of America’s greatest Indian war, readers are...

A daring literary fusion of pop culture and feminism, Swifterature captures the special connection between English literature and the worldwide phenomenon of Taylor Swift. Swifterature captures a unique fusion of different elements: fandom, feminism, and...