From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,a personal and provocative exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connectionWhen it was released to the...

Warning!*This book contains the following:Unsafe use of powerful firearms in combination with explosivesCultivation of illegal cropsImpressionable minors being exposed to illicit activitiesPiloting of automobiles under impaired conditionsTransporting...

This collection of essays, which originally appeared as a book in 1962, is virtually the complete works of an editor of Commentary magazine who died, at age 37, in 1955. Long before the rise of Cultural Studies as an academic pursuit, in the pages of the...

Discusses the Russian novelist's major works, examines his themes and writing techniques, and assesses Dostoevsky's place in modern literature

A fascinating collection of questions and answers—about courtship, marriage, love, and sex—from a seventeenth-century periodicalThe Athenian Mercury—a one-page, two-sided periodical published in 1690s London—included the world’s first personal advice...

Yan Lianke is a world-renowned author of novels, short stories, and essays whose provocative and nuanced writing explores the reality of everyday life in contemporary China. In Sound and Silence, Yan compares his literary project to a blind man carrying...

Rather than presenting a conventional chronology of Russian literature, Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction explores the place and importance in Russian culture of all types of literature. How and when did a Russian national literature come...

At the turn of the last century, as routinized industrial labor made a mockery of the gospel of work, Americans increasingly sought fulfillment not on the job but in their leisure activities. This book explores the multiple and, at times, contradictory...

From the renowned author of Austerlitz (named a Top 10 Book of the 21st Century by the New York Times)comes the first English translation of his extraordinary essays on the Austrian writers who shaped his life and work.Silent Catastrophes brings together...

A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as mindfulness, decluttering, David Cronenberg, and consent.In her debut essay collection, “brilliant and stylish” (The...

A bold, provocative collection of essays on one of the most urgent questions of our time: What is authority when everyone has an opinion on everything?Since her canonical 2017 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has...

Bestselling author Julian Barnes illuminates the process of how minds are changed—about politics, books, words, memories, and more—in this wise and fascinating new book.“We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater...

The first and only book to gather the voices and perspectives of Vietnamese diasporic authors from across the globe.Edited by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Cleaving brings together Vietnamese...

In Quest of the Hero makes available for a new generation of readers two key works on hero myths: Otto Rank's Myth of the Birth of the Hero and the central section of Lord Raglan's The Hero. Amplifying these is Alan Dundes's fascinating contemporary...

An expansive and exhilarating world tour of innovative nonfiction writingI think the reason we've never pinpointed the real beginning to this genre is because we've never agreed on what the genre even is. Do we read nonfiction in order to receive...

A career-spanning collection of inspiring, revelrous essays about art and artists Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson’s brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes, and...