In The Art of Recklessness, Dean Young's sprawling and subversive first book of prose on poetry, imagination swerves into primitivism and surrealism and finally toward empathy. How can recklessness guide the poet, the artist, and the reader into art, and...

In this exhilarating and often hilarious book, David Crystal examines why we devote so much time and energy to language games, how professionals make a career of them, and how young children instinctively take to them. Crystal makes a simple...

A master class in the art of writing by one of its most distinguished and innovative practitionersDelve into the labyrinth of Jorge Luis Borges’s thoughts on the theory and practice of literature, and learn from one of the most influential writers of the...

What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book.In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work...

Features three comic novels including With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, Tennyson's Gift, and Going Loco, as well as a collection of humorous columns about single life, under the heading of Making the Cat Laugh. By the author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves...

Winner of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography and a New York Times bestseller: a prize-winning, critically acclaimed memoir on life and aging ―“An honest joy to read” (Alice Munro).Hailed as “a virtuoso exercise” (Sunday...

An extraordinary handbook: with clarity and humor, it tells the story that even good writers have been longing to hear.Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences is a small, engaging book that sits at your desk and gives golden advice. It knows precisely what your...

Contains hundreds of precise timelines of political, popular, and historical subjects, including tables of evolution, religious movements, and jazz greats

For anyone who has ever spent time going back and forth from the thesaurus to the dictionary, in search of just the right word, the Oxford American Dictionary & Thesaurus is the perfect tool--an all-in-one desk reference offering the range and depth of a...

VanDam's award-winning Madrid StreetSmart maps all top attractions including museums, major architecture, hotels, and shopping destinations - all at an immensely legible super-scale of 1:2,400, complete with 3-D building illustrations. Clear information...

A special 10th anniversary edition of Roy Peter Clark's bestselling guide to writing, featuring five bonus tools.Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost thirty years of experience in journalism,...

With intelligence and precision, Ellen Bryant Voigt parses out the deft and alluring shape of poetic language in The Art of Syntax. Through brilliant readings of poems by Bishop, Frost, Kunitz, Lawrence, and others, Voigt examines the signature musical...

Fiction imagines for us a stopping point from which life can be seen as intelligible," asserts Joan Silber in The Art of Time in Fiction. The end point of a story determines its meaning, and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration...

"For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling, conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." — Chicago TribuneFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning...

Have you ever been told that a certain word you use is correctly pronounced in a different way? And what about those words with more than one pronunciation -- does it matter which one you use? Will your pronunciation sound silly? This installment in the...

A handy pocket-sized book, conveniently bound in a durable yet flexible laminated cover, this new edition of the Pocket World Atlas contains full-color digitally produced maps as well as the latest statistics for countries and cities. The maps are...

The Academic Encounters series uses a sustained content approach to teach skills necessary for taking academic courses in English. There are two books for each content area. Academic Encounters: Life in Society engages students with authentic academic...

Graywolf reissues one of its most successful essay collections with two new essays and a new foreword by Charles BaxterAs much a rumination on the state of literature as a technical manual for aspiring writers, Burning Down the House has been enjoyed by...

"No other poet seems better suited to represent the United States as its Laureate in this era than Ted Kooser, and The Poetry Home Repair Manual should enhance his grip on our slumbering Republic."—Larry Woiwode, Poet Laureate of North Dakota, in North...