To pre order, fill in the form here.
View this site on mobile platform for optimal experience.
Titles indicated with an "A" indicated next to their ISBN means the stock are available at point of creating this catalogue.
In Letters of Note: Space, Shaun Usher brings together fascinating correspondence about the universe beyond our planet, containing hopeful thoughts about the future of space travel, awestruck messages penned about the worlds beyond our own and celebrations of the human ingenuity that has facilitated our understanding of the cosmos.
Includes letters by: Buzz Aldrin, Isaac Asimov, Marion Carpenter, Yuri Gagarin,Ann Druyan, Stanley Kubrick,Alexander Graham Bell, Neil DeGrasse Tyson & many more (160 pages / $19) On Susan Gubar's seventieth birthday, she receives a beautiful ring from her husband. As she contemplates their sustaining relationship, she begins to consider how older lovers differ from their youthful counterparts-and from ageist stereotypes. While her husband confronts age-related disabilities that effectively ground them, Susan dawdles over the logistics of moving from their cherished country house to a more manageable place in town and starts seeking out literature on the changing seasons of desire.
Throughout the complications of devoted caregiving, her own ongoing cancer treatments, apartment hunting, the dismantling of a household and perplexity over the breakdown of a treasured friendship, Susan finds consolation in books and movies. Works by writers from Ovid and Shakespeare to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Marilynne Robinson lead Susan to appraise the obstacles many senior couples overcome: the unique sexuality of bodies beyond their prime as well as the trials of retirement, adult children, physical infirmities, the multiplications or subtractions of memory and the after effects of trauma. On the page and in life, Susan realises that age cannot wither love. A memoir proving that the heart's passions have no expiration date, Late-Life Love rejoices in second chances. (352 pages / $28) About the author: Susan D. Gubar (born 1944) is an American author and distinguished Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University. She is best known for co-authoring the landmark feminist literary study The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979) with Sandra Gilbert. She has also written a trilogy on women's writing in the 20th century. Her honours include the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. Produced using traditional Chinese bookbinding techniques—including a hand-sewn spine, uncut pages, and a cloth cover—this exquisite dual-language edition of the Book of Songs features 32 classic poems.
Believed by some to have been compiled by Confucius, the Book of Songs (or Shi-jing) is the oldest existing anthology of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BCE. Some feature shorter lyrics in simple language that reflects the voice of the common people—folk songs addressing love and courtship, political satire, and protest. Others focus on court life and dynasties, and nearly all the songs rhyme. This stunning dual-language edition features 32 of the most beautiful verses, including “Se Miu,” about a man exhaustedly working for the king, and “Odes Of Yong (Bo Zhou),” a melancholy love poem. In the same way that Homer’s epics took hold within the West, the Book of Songs’ influence extends beyond literature onto education, politics, and communal life. (Hardcover / 96 pages / $43) Watch this video to preview the book. In this love letter to reading, curated by Pandora Sykes in aid of the National Literacy Trust, bestselling and beloved writers share their favourite books: the ones they hold most dearly, that they return to time and again and that helped make them the writers they are.
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM : NICK HORNBY * RUTH OZEKI * ANN PATCHETT * BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH * MARIAN KEYES * ELIZABETH STROUT * DEBORAH LEVY * TESSA HADLEY * ELIF SHAFAK * GEORGE THE POET * LEILA SLIMANI * ALI SMITH * DEREK OWUSU * DOLLY ALDERTON * PARIS LEES * JOJO MOYES * PAUL MENDEZ * SEBASTIAN FAULKS * DIANA EVANS * MEENA KANDASAMY * LISA TADDEO * NIKESH SHUKLA * TAIYE SELASI * MONICA ALI * NINA STIBBE * CALEB AZUMAH NELSON * ELIZABETH DAY * SARA COLLINS * DAMON GALGUT * NAOISE DOLAN * WILLIAM BOYD * EMMA DABIRI * FATIMA BHUTTO * KIT DE WAAL (Hardcover / 204 pages / $30) In an elegant but contemporary voice, award-winning author Susan Griffin breaks down the creative process step-by-step, guiding the reader through a practical course in how to begin and end a work of literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry, or prose
The distinguished author of more than twenty-two books, many award-winning, Susan Griffin distills daily wisdom garnered from more than five decades teaching creative writing and editing manuscripts, as well as from her own writing. This collection of brief but ultimately pithy chapters designed to help beginning writers get started also guides experienced writers through blocks and difficulties of all kinds. Organized according to a practical timeline, Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something. elucidates the process of writing from beginning to end, presenting an approach that is similar to the practice of meditation as it encourages and enlarges the mind’s intrinsic capacity for creativity. An autobiographical account, a sometimes humorous, at times moving essay called “How I Learned to Write” is threaded throughout the book. (256 pages / $32) 'Having the last word can be very lonely.'
The remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the writer Michael Frank over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale. With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood in Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium. Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays over the course of six years that they would spend in each other’s company. During these meetings Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians conquered in 1912, began governing as an official colonial possession in 1923, and continued to administer even after the Germans seized control in September 1943. The following July, the Germans rounded up all 1,700-plus residents of the Juderia and sent them first by boat and then by train to Auschwitz on what was the longest journey—measured by both time and distance—of any of the deportations. Ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival. Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place has vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, as well as an account of a tender and transformative friendship that develops between storyteller and listener as they explore the fundamental mystery of what it means to collect, share, and interpret the deepest truths of a life deeply lived. (Hardcover / 224 pages / $41) Dating from 1909 to 1923, the handwritten diaries contain various kinds of writing: accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, accounts of dreams, as well as finished stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of the diary entries and provides substantial new content, including details, names, literary works, and passages of a sexual nature that were omitted from previous publications.
By faithfully reproducing the diaries’ distinctive—and often surprisingly unpolished—writing in Kafka’s notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the author’s use of the diaries for literary experimentation and private self-expression, but also their value as a work of art in themselves. (Hardcover / 704 pages / Published by Schocken Books, founded by Salman Schocken in Germany in 1931 / $78) Two Philosophers Ask and Answer the Big Questions About the Search for Faith and Happiness
For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God. The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages. (304 pages / $32) Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s in our midst—or just across the ocean—if only we can find eyes to see it.
Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld – or can it be found in the here and now? For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul’s delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim’s readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives. (Hardcover / 240 pages / $27) The epic story of the planet’s oldest trees and the making of the modern world
Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as historian Jared Farmer reveals in Elderflora, our veneration took a modern turn in the eighteenth century, when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and precisely date the oldest living things on earth. The new science of tree time prompted travelers to visit ancient specimens and conservationists to protect sacred groves. Exploitation accompanied sanctification, as old-growth forests succumbed to imperial expansion and the industrial revolution. Taking us from Lebanon to New Zealand to California, Farmer surveys the complex history of the world’s oldest trees, including voices of Indigenous peoples, religious figures, and contemporary scientists who study elderflora in crisis. In a changing climate, a long future is still possible, Farmer shows, but only if we give care to young things that might grow old. (448 pages / $37) The difference between life and literature; the good intentions of holiday reading; the avante-garde; the fate of the novel; the fantastical; the art of translation: these are just some of the ideas in The Written World and the Unwritten World.
A collection of essays, articles, interviews, correspondence, notes and other occasional pieces on writing, reading and interpreting books, this work gives us new insight into Italo Calvino's expansive, curious and generous mind. (384 pages / $33) The World in Thirty-Eight Chapters or Dr Johnson’s Guide to Life is a source of profound good sense about what it means to teach, read, write and travel. More than that, though, Henry Hitchings continually translates Samuel Johnson's experience of poverty, scorn, pain and madness into a rich understanding of how to be.
Samuel Johnson was a critic, an essayist, a poet and a biographer. He was also, famously, the compiler of the first good English dictionary, published in 1755. A polymath and a great conversationalist, his intellectual and social curiosity were boundless. Yet he was a deeply melancholy man, haunted by dark thoughts, sickness and a diseased imagination. In his own life, both public and private, he sought to choose a virtuous and prudent path, negotiating everyday hazards and temptations. His writings and aphorisms illuminate what it means to lead a life of integrity, and his experience, abundantly documented by him and by others (such as James Boswell and Hester Thrale), is a lesson in the art of regulating the mind and the body. Johnson’s story touches on many themes that have enduring significance. He was, and remains, a perceptive commentator on the vanity of human wishes, the rewards and dangers of charity, the need to cultivate kindness, the complexities of family life (especially marriage), the effects of boredom and the fleeting nature of pleasure. He writes and speaks incisively and humanely about the ego, ambition, hypocrisy, fallibility and disorders of the mind, as well as the corrosive effects of obsession, the precariousness of fame and the skulduggery of the literary world. (320 pages / $23) I carry each book I’ve ever read with me, just as I carry my dead―those things that aren’t really there, those things that shape everything I am.
A genre-bending work of nonfiction, Samantha Hunt’s The Unwritten Book explores ghosts, ghost stories, and haunting, in the broadest sense of each. What is it to be haunted, to be a ghost, to die, to live, to read? Books are ghosts; reading is communion with the dead. Alcohol is a way of communing, too, as well as a way of dying. Each chapter gathers subjects that haunt: dead people, the forest, the towering library of all those books we’ll never have time to read or write. Hunt, like a mad crossword puzzler, looks for patterns and clues. Through literary criticism, history, family history, and memoir, inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and many others, Hunt explores motherhood, hoarding, legacies of addiction, grief, how we insulate ourselves from the past, how we misinterpret the world. Nestled within her inquiry is a very special ghost book, an incomplete manuscript about people who can fly without wings, written by her father and found in his desk just days after he died. What secret messages might his work reveal? What wisdom might she distill from its unfinished pages? Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love. (Hardcover / 384 pages / $53) When Graham Caveney was in his early twenties he began to suffer from what was eventually diagnosed as agoraphobia. What followed were decades of managing his condition and learning to live within the narrow limits it imposed on his life: no motorways, no dual carriageways, no shopping centres, limited time outdoors.
Graham’s quest to understand his illness brought him back to his first love: books. From Harper Lee’s Boo Radley, Ford Madox Ford, Emily Dickinson, and Shirley Jackson: the literary world is replete with examples of agoraphobics – once you go looking for them. On Agoraphobia is a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes painfully acute look at what it means to go through life with an anxiety disorder that evades easy definition. (208 pages / $30) On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave’s Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone’s piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, growing in significance with every passing year.
In 2019, Cave – his collaborator and great friend – asked Warren if there was anything he could contribute to display in his Stranger Than Kindness exhibition. Warren realised the time had come to release the gum. Together they agreed it should be housed in a glass case like a holy relic. Worrying the gum would be damaged or lost, Warren decided to first have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted, one that would take him back to his childhood and his relationship to found objects. Nina Simone’s Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love. (224 pages / $24) A spellbinding story about love, faith, the search for utopia - and the often devastating cost of idealism.
It’s the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world - Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, the future bright. So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in Better to Have Gone, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash’s wife, Auralice. Akash and Auralice grew up in Auroville; like the rest of their community, they never really understood those deaths. In 2004, Akash and Auralice return to Auroville from New York, where they have been living with John’s family. As they re-establish themselves, along with their two sons, in the community, they must confront the ghosts of those distant deaths. Slowly, they come to understand how the tragic individual fates of John and Diane intersected with the collective history of their town.
Better to Have Gone is a book about the human cost of our age-old quest for a more perfect world. It probes the under-explored yet universal idea of utopia, and it portrays in vivid detail the daily life of one utopian community. Richly atmospheric and filled with remarkable characters, spread across time and continents, this is narrative writing of the highest order - a heartbreaking, unforgettable story. (368 pages / $24) A guide to reviving and revitalizing forgotten places and communities through the Japanese principles of kuni
Kuni offers a unique model for the revitalization of rural and deindustrialized lands and communities–and shares lessons in citizen-led regeneration for all of us, regardless of where we live. “Kuni” is both a reimagining of the Japanese word for nation and an approach to reviving communities. It shows what happens when dedicated people band together and invest their hearts, minds, and souls back into a community, modeling a new way of living that actually works. A kuni can be created anywhere–even a hamlet on the verge of extinction–and embodies 7 key principles:
With spare and beautiful prose and useful principles for reviving rural places, this book addresses our longing for a hopeful revolution of everyday life. (176 pages / $29) In Japan, rural communities possess beautiful yet dilapidated housing. Many are one and two-hundred-year-old farmhouses. In rural Joetsu, they are slowly being renovated to serve current community needs: as community centers, short-term rentals, restaurants, museums, and housing for those who remain.
In 2012, the world arrived in London for the Olympics...and Ann Morgan went out to meet it. She read her way around all the globe's 196 independent countries (plus one extra), sampling one book from every nation. It wasn't easy. Many languages have next to nothing translated into English; there are tiny, tucked-away places where very little is written down; some governments don't like to let works of art escape their borders.
Using Morgan's own quest as a starting point, Reading the World explores the vital questions of our time and how reading across borders might just help us answer them. 'Revelatory... While Morgan's research has a daunting range...there is a simple message: reading is a social activity, and we ought to share books across boundaries' Financial Times (208 pages / $24) A profound meditation on accepting, and celebrating, one’s solitude.
Whether seeking more time for solitude or suffering what seems a surfeit of it, readers will find the best of companions here. Fenton Johnson’s lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion, common in his Roman Catholic childhood, that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. He delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic “solitaries” he considers his kindred spirits, from Thoreau at Walden Pond and Emily Dickinson in Amherst, to Bill Cunningham photographing the streets of New York; from Cézanne (married, but solitary nonetheless) painting Mont Sainte-Victoire over and over again, to the fiercely self-protective Zora Neale Hurston. Each character portrait is full of intense detail, the bright wakes they’ve left behind illuminating Fenton Johnson’s own journey from his childhood in the backwoods of Kentucky to his travels alone throughout the world and the people he has lost and found along the way. Combining memoir, social criticism, and devoted research, At the Center of All Beauty will resonate with solitaries and with anyone who might wish to carve out more space for solitude. (Hardcover / 256 pages / $45) Let Secret Bangkok guide you around the unusual and unfamiliar. Ideal for local inhabitants, curious visitors and armchair travellers alike.
Bangkok is regularly listed as the number one city destination in the world yet take time to scratch just a little below the surface and you'll find stunning and intriguing (and sometimes downright bizarre) spots that remain virtually unknown to outsiders ... and often to the citizens themselves. Frequent residents Narina Exelby and Mark Eveleigh spent over a year hunting down some of the city's most captivating secret spots - many of which even experienced local guides had never heard of. This book will lead you to the place where people offer bacon and eggs to tiger temple guardians, and a temple with elaborate effigies of David Beckham, Donald Duck and Popeye. It will take you into the lair of giant monitor lizards, show you how to gain merit by sponsoring a coffin, or how to decipher, from a tree trunk, the winning lottery numbers offered by a beautiful female ghost.You'll also meet a unique community of outlaw flute-players, eat a communal vegetarian breakfast with Bangkok's Sikh community, learn about the traditional Thai pastime of "baldy-butting", and meet a celebrated "healer" who goes by the name of Madame Breast-slapper.
Secret Bangkok is more than just an indispensable guide to the hidden face of the city: it is written also to offer fascinating background information for those who love to connect with the soul of a place. (256 pages / $30) This beautiful illustrated book introduces readers to the culture, traditions, reflections and celebrations of the Ukrainian people during Christmas. Originally published in 2020 in Ukraine, to immediate acclaim, this English language version includes a new Foreword written by the authors following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022
From Christmas music to gifts and food, as well as a look back through the country's rich and troubled history through the perspective of the festive season, this beautifully illustrated and powerful book introduces readers to Ukraine's unique Christmas traditions. In a country where East and West meet, this is a fascinating and unmissable guide to capturing the spirit of one of the most important times of year and a powerful reminder of the strength of holding on to your culture and beliefs, even as others try to take everything from you. The Publisher is making a donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal on publication of this book. (Hardcover / 128 pages / $40) 'Christmas brings the indestructibility of hope in times of the greatest hopelessness. As long as we celebrate this holiday, we can neither be defeated nor destroyed. This is the message that Ukraine is trying to convey to the world. And this is what our book is about.' Yaroslav Hrytsak is a Ukrainian historian and public intellectual. Professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University and Honorary Professor of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Professor Hrytsak has taught at Columbia and Harvard Universities and was a guest lecturer at the Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of many historical books, including several bestsellers and the recipient of numerous national and international awards and has written opinion pieces for many publications including The Times, the New York Times and Time Magazine.
Mark Hodkinson grew up among the terrace houses of Rochdale in a house with just one book. His dad kept it on top of a wardrobe with other items of great worth - wedding photographs and Mark's National Cycling Proficiency certificate. If Mark wanted to read it, he was warned not to crease the pages or slam shut the covers.
Today, Mark is an author, journalist and publisher. He still lives in Rochdale, but is now snugly ensconced (or is that buried?) in a 'book cave' surrounded by 3,500 titles - at the last count. No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. It's about schools (bad), music (good) and the people (some mad, a few sane), and pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors (some bad, mostly good) that led the way, and shaped his life. It's also about a family who just didn't see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who, in his own way, taught Mark the power of stories. In recounting his own life-long love affair with books, Mark also tells the story of how writing and reading has changed over the last five decades, starting with the wave of working-class writers in the 1950s and 60s, where he saw himself reflected in books for the first time. (Hardcover / 368 pages / $40) Mark Hodkinson is an experienced investigative and skilled journalist and author, having written for The Times for two decades, three years as a columnist. He has also contributed to The Observer, The Guardian, FourFourTwo, Word, GQ and others. It's an old cliche that books 'transport you'; but as any avid reader will tell you, there's far more to them than that. Alongside comfort and retreat, books offer insight into ourselves and others; they tell us how the world is, was or might be; they are windows into other worlds, whose meanings resonate through the ages. It's this multiplicity that is at the heart of bibliotherapy, the ancient practice of reading for therapeutic effect.
Reading the Seasons charts the evolution of a friendship through candid letters between bibliotherapists Germaine Leece and Sonya Tsakalakis. Ignited by a shared love of reading, of finding a book for every occasion, every emotion - both for themselves and for their clients - their conversations soon confront life's ups and downs. The authors they reach for range from Stephen King to Javier Marias, Helen Garner to Maggie O'Farrell, as they reflect upon loss, change, parenting, careers, simple pleasures, travel, successes, fears and uncertainty. Reading the Seasons not only offers an entryway to new titles but affirms the power of books to console, heal and hold us together as friends and as individuals. (256 pages / $39) Offering helpful guidance, this illustrated handbook introduces new ways of viewing art and shows how anyone can use art to work through difficult emotions and improve their mental state.
Enlightening, challenging, and informative, visual art can also be therapeutic, reducing anxiety and stress levels, and offering perspective on the challenges that we all face in our lives. How Art Can Change Your Life introduces readers to new ways of looking at a wide range of art. Through careful examination and explanation, author Susie Hodge investigates how engaging with art and drawing can help everyone feel more connected and inspired. From Frida Kahlo confronting her anxieties to Henri Matisse embracing happiness, and from Louise Bourgeois conquering fear to Auguste Rodin finding hope, this book will show how you too can use art to work through difficult emotions and improve your mental state. All art can broaden knowledge, give enjoyment, and challenge our assumptions; but it can also help soothe, calm, enlighten, and uplift the mind and spirit. Even art that leaves us uncomfortable can still help us to think differently and give us new perspective.
In twelve chapters, readers will learn how art can dissipate anger, help to overcome sorrow, inspire self-reflection, as well as tackle other mental challenges. Artists have been conveying aspirations, feelings, ideas, and stories for thousands of years, and this book will help everyone “read” those messages with the goal of enriching their own emotional life through art. (192 pages / 88 illustrations / $32) The representation of the nude in art remained for many centuries a victory of fiction over fact. Beautiful, handsome, flawless – its great success was to distance the unclothed body from any uncomfortably explicit taint of sexuality, eroticism or imperfection.
In this newly updated study, Frances Borzello contrasts the civilized, sanitized, perfected nude of Kenneth Clark’s classic, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1956), with today’s depictions: raw, uncomfortable, both disturbing and intriguing. Grittier and more subtle, depicting variously gendered bodies, the new nude asks awkward questions and behaves provocatively. It is a very naked nude, created to deal with the issues and contradictions that surround the body in our time. Borzello explores the role of the nude in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, looking at the work of a wide range of international artists creating contemporary nudes. Her fascinating text is complemented by a profusion of well-chosen, unusual and beautifully reproduced illustrations. The story begins with a tale of life, death and resurrection – an investigation into how and why the nude has survived and flourished in an art world that prematurely announced its demise. Subsequent chapters take a thematic approach, focusing in turn on Body art and Performance art, the new perspectives of women artists, the nude in painting, portraiture and sculpture and in its most extreme and graphic expressions that intentionally push the boundaries of both art and our comfort zone. The final chapter illustrates radical developments in art and culture over the last decade, focusing in particular on artworks by women, trans artists and artists of colour. Borzello links these works to their art-historical and political predecessors, demonstrating the continually unending capacity of the nude to disrupt traditional hierarchies and gender categories in life and art. (224 pages / $43) Forget the chilly perfection of marble sculpture – a Cambridge classicist presents ancient bodies in all their fleshy fallibility
The Greek and Roman body is often seen as flawless - cast from life in buff bronze and white marble, to sit upon a pedestal. But this, of course, is a lie. Here, classicist Caroline Vout reaches beyond texts and galleries to expose Greek and Roman bodies for what they truly were: anxious, ailing, imperfect, diverse, and responsible for a legacy as lasting as their statues. Taking us on a gruesome, thrilling journey, she taps into the questions that those in the Greek and Roman worlds asked about their bodies - where do we come from? What makes us different from gods and animals? What happens to our bodies, and the forces that govern them, when we die? You've seen the paintings, read the philosophers and heard the myths - now here's the classical body in all its flesh and blood glory. (Hardcover / 432 pages / $54) This collection of intimate, illustrated essays by some of America’s most well–regarded literary writers explores how comfort food can help us cope with dark times—be it the loss of a parent, the loneliness of a move, or the pain of heartache.
Lev Grossman explains how he survived on “sweet, sour, spicy, salty, unabashedly gluey” General Tso’s tofu after his divorce. Carmen Maria Machado describes her growing pains as she learned to feed and care for herself during her twenties. Claire Messud tries to understand how her mother gave up dreams of being a lawyer to make “a dressed salad of tiny shrimp and avocado, followed by prune–stuffed pork tenderloin.” What makes each tale so moving is not only the deeply personal revelations from celebrated writers, but also the compassion and healing behind the story: the taste of hope. (Hardcover / 208 pages / $37) Cooking is thinking!
The spatter of sauce in a pan, a cook’s subtle deviation from a recipe, the careful labour of cooking for loved ones: these are not often the subjects of critical enquiry. Cooking, we are told, has nothing to do with serious thought; the path to intellectual fulfilment leads directly out of the kitchen. In this electrifying, innovative memoir, Rebecca May Johnson rewrites the kitchen as a vital source of knowledge and revelation. Drawing on insights from ten years spent thinking through cooking, she explores the radical openness of the recipe text, the liberating constraint of apron strings and the transformative intimacies of shared meals. Playfully dissolving the boundaries between abstract intellect and bodily pleasure, domesticity and politics, Johnson awakens us to the richness of cooking as a means of experiencing the self and the world – and to the revolutionary potential of the small fires burning in every kitchen. (Hardcover / 240 pages / $33) In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and WiFi are banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.
Deep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the last truly quiet town in America. Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned: It’s home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory’s telescopes, Quiet Zone residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity. But a community that on the surface seems idyllic is a place of contradictions, where the provincial meets the seemingly supernatural and quiet can serve as a cover for something darker. Stephen Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, making the residents of this small Appalachian village his neighbors. He shopped at the town’s general store, attended church services, went target shooting with a seven-year-old, square-danced with the locals, sampled the local moonshine. In The Quiet Zone, he introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. Amongst them all are the ordinary citizens seeking a simpler way of living. Kurczy asks: Is a less connected life desirable? Is it even possible? The Quiet Zone is a remarkable work of investigative journalism—at once a stirring ode to place, a tautly wound tale of mystery, and a clarion call to reexamine the role technology plays in our lives. (352 pages / $33) HOW A BOOKSELLER INSPIRED A NATION
The diary of a publicist-turned bookseller who left Florence to open a tiny bookshop on a Tuscan hill. 'Romano, I'd like to open a bookshop where I live.' 'Right. How many people are we talking about?' 'A hundred and eighty.' 'Right, so if a hundred and eighty thousand people live there, then . . .' 'No, not hundred and eighty thousand, Romano. Just a hundred and eighty.' 'Alba . . . Have you lost your mind?' Conversation between Alba Donati and Romano Montroni, founder of Italy's largest bookselling chain Alba used to live a hectic life, working as a book publicist in Florence - a life that made her happy and led her to meet prominent international authors. And yet, she always felt like she was a woman on the run. And so one day she decides to stop running and go back to Lucignana, the small village on the Tuscan hills where she was born, to open a tiny bookshop. With a total of only 180 residents, Alba's enterprise in Lucignana seems doomed from day one but it surprisingly sparks the enthusiasm of many across Tuscany - and beyond. A tale of resilience and entrepreneurship and a celebration of booksellers everywhere. (208 pages / $30) 'A work of significant beauty... Inspiring about the continuing life of books, and about the ways in which our lives can change and our dreams can come true, if only we insist on believing in changes and dreams' Andrea Werhun’s sex work career gave her money, freedom, joy, and a lot of dick. A natural performer, she revelled in the opportunity to invent Mary Ann, her escort counterpart, and introduce her to men all over the city. She whores, she learns, she writes it all down, and then, as per a signed document she handed to her Catholic mother in her early twenties, she quits. To become a stripper.
Andrea and Nicole revisit the idea of the modern whore, with the enhanced perspective of Andrea’s experience at the strip club. This new, engorged edition of the sold-out memoir-cum-art book expands on the original concept–a series of vignettes exploring the many identities sex workers adopt in the service of their clients and in the eyes of the public–in both a literal and literary way. But Andrea doesn’t shy away from the serious side of sex work, either, exploring the risks sex workers take, and the rights our culture is constantly taking away from them. This series of stories and portraits investigate the many ways we imagine—and mistake—the modern whore. It’s Playboy if the Playmates were in charge. (Hardcover / 320 pages / $60) My name’s Andrea Werhun and I’m a writer & performer in Toronto. I’m the author & co-creator of Modern Whore: A Memoir (2022, Strange Light/Penguin Random House Canada), an acclaimed sex work art book made in collaboration with filmmaker Nicole Bazuin.
In addition to my creative pursuits, I served as a peer outreach worker with Maggie’s: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project from 2018-2022. On the topic of sex worker rights, I’ve given university lectures, led workshops, hosted and participated on panels, and performed countless readings of my work. I hold an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto (2012), with a major in English and a double minor in Religion and Paradigms & Archetypes. An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary medieval people.
The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much—or too little—sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Holy men and women committed themselves to lifelong abstinence in the name of religion. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong. Other experiences are more familiar. Like us, medieval people faced challenges in finding a suitable partner or trying to get pregnant (or trying not to). They also struggled with many of the same social issues, such as whether prostitution should be legalized. Above all, they shared our fondness for dirty jokes and erotic images. By exploring their sex lives, the book brings ordinary medieval people to life and reveals details of their most personal thoughts and experiences. Ultimately, it provides us with an important and intimate connection to the past. (320 pages / $24) A uniquely ambitious study of the Bible's creation.
This book tells the story of the Bible, how it came to be constructed and how it has been understood, from its remote beginnings down to the present. It describes how the disparate writings which comprise the Bible were written and when, as well as what we know - and what we cannot know - about their authors and what they might have meant. Incisive readings shed new light on even the most familiar passages, exposing not only the sources and traditions behind them, but also the busy hands of the scribes and editors who assembled and reshaped them. Rather than the fixed, coherent text it is often perceived to be, the Bible is revealed to be the result of a long and intriguing evolution. Tracing its dissemination, translation and interpretation in Judaism and Christianity from Antiquity to the rise of modern biblical scholarship, Barton shows how meaning has both been drawn from the Bible and imposed upon it. Part of the book's originality is to illuminate the gap between religion and scripture, the ways in which neither maps exactly onto the other, and how religious thinkers from Augustine to Luther and Spinoza have reckoned with this. A landmark in its field, A History of the Bible makes us rethink the central book of Western culture and the foundation of two world religions. (640 pages / $28) John Barton is a theologian who served as the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford in England for twenty-three years, and has been an ordained and serving priest in the Church of England since 1973. He has studied and taught the Bible throughout his academic career, and has written many books on it. Bourgeois scholarship as disguise: “Fake books“ are objects that simulate the most important carriers of knowledge and culture by subverting fundamental functions such as visualisation, information or entertainment. Most of these “book simulators“ are beautiful containers, which serve for storing – or hiding – approximately everything. The viewer is always confronted by the discrepancy between appearance and being, between form and function.
Armin Müller has collected book dummies of very different sizes, styles and provenances from different eras: art-historically valuable, technically sophisticated and historically exciting pieces, but also kitsch of all kinds. The imaginative and creative richness of camouflage and illusion seems to be inexhaustible. (Hardcover / 352 pages / $107) A celebration of all the weird and wonderful books to be found at an antiquarian bookshop.
Books have the power to enrich the soul, to enliven the senses, to expand our horizons… and others are simply mad. This wonderful celebration of the oddest books ever published is a treat for all bibliophiles, booksellers and fans of the bizarre. It is an exploration of the most eccentric titles and covers from our past, that have inexplicably fallen out of print but should never be forgotten. (Hardcover / 128 pages / $26) Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes or filled with bean bags and children's drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied and stuffed full of incident.
In this, the first major history of its kind, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore the contested and dramatic history of the library, from the famous collections of the ancient world to the embattled public resources we cherish today. Along the way, they introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world's great collections, trace the rise and fall of fashions and tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanours committed in pursuit of rare and valuable manuscripts. (528 pages / $25) Can educators continue to teach troubling but worthwhile texts?
Our current “culture wars” have reshaped the politics of secondary literature instruction. Due to a variety of challenges from both the left and the right—to language or subject matter, to potentially triggering content, or to authors who have been canceled—school reading lists are rapidly shrinking. For many teachers, choosing which books to include in their curriculum has become an agonizing task with political, professional, and ethical dimensions. In Literature and the New Culture Wars, Professor Deborah Appleman calls for a reacknowledgment of the intellectual and affective work that literature can do, and offers ways to continue to teach troubling texts without doing harm. Rather than banishing challenged texts from our classrooms, she writes, we should be confronting and teaching the controversies they invoke. Her book is a timely and eloquent argument for a reasoned approach to determining what literature still deserves to be read and taught and discussed.
(Hardcover / 192 pages / $34) About the author: Deborah Appleman is the Hollis L. Caswell professor of educational studies and director of the Summer Writing Program at Carleton College. Professor Appleman’s recent research has focused on teaching college-level language and literature courses at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater for inmates who are interested in pursuing post-secondary education. Other books by Professor Appleman: ~ Reading for Themselves: How to Transform Adolescents into Lifelong Readers Through Out-of-Class Book Clubs ~ Teaching Literature to Adolescents, ~ Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescent ~ Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading ~ Reading Better, Reading Smarter: Designing Literature lessons for Adolescents. In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author and famously private writer Haruki Murakami shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.
Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game, when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer’s “mental chest of drawers”; the necessity of loneliness, patience, and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career. Readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this insightful and unique look at the craft of writing and into the mind of a master storyteller. (Hardcover / 224 pages / $37) When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis. Wrestling with this, Seán Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope.
All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender portrayal of what it's like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one's suffering. By turns devastating and soaring, it is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a work of rare and transcendent beauty. (Hardcover / 240 pages / $33) The role of comfort women in history remains a topic of importance — and emotion — around the world. Most scholarship concentrates on Korean comfort women, with less on their counterparts in Japan, China, Taiwan and even less on Southeast Asia. It is well-known that an elaborate series of comfort stations, or comfort houses, were organised by the Japanese administration across Singapore during the Occupation from 1942 to 1945. And historians have recorded eyewitness accounts from Korean comfort women who served here, and from managers of Singapore comfort stations.
So why did no local former comfort women come forward and tell their stories when others across Asia began to do publicly in the 1990s? To understand this silence, the book details the sex industry serving the Japanese military during the wartime occupation of Singapore: the comfort stations, managers, procuresses, girls and women who either volunteered or were forced into service and in many cases sexual slavery. Could it be that no former comfort women remained in Singapore after the war? Blackburn shows through a careful weighing of the different kinds of evidence why this was not the case. The immediate post-war years, and efforts to repatriate or ‘reform’ former comfort women fills in a key part of the history. The author then turns from history to the public presence of the comfort women in Singapore's memory: newspapers, novels, plays, television, and touristic heritage sites, showing how comfort women became known in Singapore during the 1990s and 2000s. Blackburn brings great care, balance and sensitivity to a difficult subject. (224 pages / NUS Press / $39) World-renowned folklorist Maria Tatar reveals an astonishing but long-buried history of heroines.
The Heroine with 1,001 Faces dismantles the cult of warrior heroes, revealing a secret history of heroinism at the very heart of our collective cultural imagination. Maria Tatar, a leading authority on fairy tales and folklore, explores how heroines, rarely wielding a sword and often deprived of a pen, have flown beneath the radar even as they have been bent on redemptive missions. Deploying domestic crafts and using words as weapons, they have found ways to survive assaults and rescue others from harm, all while repairing the fraying edges in the fabric of their social worlds. Like the tongueless Philomela, who spins the tale of her rape into a tapestry, or Arachne, who portrays the misdeeds of the gods, they have discovered instruments for securing fairness in the storytelling circles where so-called women’s work—spinning, mending and weaving—is carried out. In a broad-ranging volume that moves with ease from the local to the global, Tatar demonstrates how our new heroines wear their curiosity as a badge of honour rather than a mark of shame and how their “mischief making” evidences compassion and concern. The Heroine with 1,001 Faces creates a luminous arc that takes us from ancient times to the present day. It casts an unusually wide net, expanding the canon and thinking capaciously in global terms, breaking down the boundaries of genre and displaying a sovereign command of cultural context. This, then, is a historic volume that informs our present and its newfound investment in empathy and social justice like no other work of recent cultural history. (368 pages / $35) Book Cover Design from East Asia is a compendium of more than 100 book covers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The book features the work of Wang Zhi-Hong, Nakano Design Office, The Simple Society, UMA/design farm, Hayashi Takuma Design Office and many, many more. (112 pages / $19)
Beware the women who are called witches, or those who claim the name for themselves…
Banshees – a howling night-witch and harbinger of death; She-devils – Lilith and her daughters; or Bitches – Hecate, whose chariot is drawn by dogs. Alluring women, enchantresses, seekers of revenge, wise old women and badly-behaved girls. As Shahrukh Husain says, witches are ‘womanhood in all its complexity’. Over fifty stories of crones and nixies, shape shifters and beauties are here, including the loving fox witch of Japan; Italy’s Witch-Bea-Witch; Scotland’s Goodwife of Laggan; Biddy Earl and the terrifying Kali and Baba Yaga who comes in many forms to haunt, entice, possess, transform and challenge. From every corner of the globe, with tom-foolery, fun, strife and victory, these folklore and legends celebrate women who step out of line. (368 pages / $26) |
"I think I need another bookshop,” she told fourth husband, Lance. Ruth Shaw weaves together stories of the characters who visit her bookshops, musings about favourite books, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life.
Underlining all her wanderings and adventures are some very deep losses and long-held pain. Balancing that out is her beautiful love story with Lance, and her delightful sense of humour.
This will make you weep and make you laugh and make you want to read more books - and make you want to visit Ruth and her two wee bookshops. (Hardcover / 320 pages / $33) "Shaw’s bookshops make up only a small part of her memoir, a book interspersed with heartwarming and occasionally heartbreaking vignettes detailing unexpected encounters with humans who cross her threshold – a traumatised NSW firefighter; a barely literate young man; a woman Shaw refuses to sell to, who only wants to buy books of certain colours to go with her decor." The Guardian Deeply funny, moving, and urgent writing about a country that can feel broken into pieces and the light that shines through the cracks, from Irish comedian Maeve Higgins.
As an eternally curious outsider, Maeve Higgins can see that the United States is still an experiment. Some parts work well and others really don’t, but that doesn’t stop her from loving the place and the people that make it. With piercing political commentary in a sweet and salty tone, these essays unearth answers to the questions we all have about this country we call home; the beauty of it all and the dark parts too. Maeve attends the 2020 Border Security Expo to better understand the future of our borders, and finds herself at The Alamo surrounded by queso and homemade rifles. A chance encounter with a statue of a teenage horseback rider causes her to interrogate the purpose of monuments, this sends her hurtling through the past, connecting Ireland’s revolutionary history with the struggles of Black Americans today. And after mistaking edibles for innocent candies, Maeve gets way too high at Paper Source. Most of all, Maeve wants to leave this country and this planet better than she found it. That may well be impossible, but it certainly means showing love. Lots of it, even when it’s difficult to do so. Threaded through these pieces is love for strangers, love for friends who show up right on time, love for trees, love for Tom Hardy, love for those with differing opinions, love for the glamorous older women of Brighton Beach with tattooed eyeliner and gold jewelry, love for everybody on this train. "Note: personal connections to Ireland and America not necessary to enjoy the content of this essay." Goodreads (224 pages / $29) Written in 1942 to inspire courage in those daunted by wartimes shortages, How to Cook a Wolf has continued to rally readers and cooks during times of both scarcity and plenty.
With her trademark wit and warm wisdom, Fisher shares her timeless tips for keeping up spirits – and appetites – when ingredients are in short supply. Instead of regretting what we don’t have, she teaches us how to savour what we do. Fisher also offers dozens of recipe ideas, from soups and simple omelettes, to baking bread and sprucing up tinned food. Knowing that the last thing hungry people need are hints on cutting back and making do, Fisher gives us licence to dream, experiment and invent adventurous and delicious meals from whatever we can salvage from the back of the cupboard. How to Cook a Wolf shows us how to feed our hungers and nourish our souls, even when fear is in our hearts and the wolf is at the door. (288 pages / $22)
When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations.
In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war. These Armed Services Editions were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. When Books Went to War is the inspiring story of the Armed Services Editions, and a treasure for history buffs and book lovers alike. (304 pages / $29) Hailed as a classic of war writing in the U.K., The Junior Officers' Reading Club is a revelatory first-hand account of a young enlistee's profound coming of age.
Attempting to stave off the tedium and pressures of army life in the Iraqi desert by losing themselves in the dusty paperbacks on the transit-camp bookshelves, Hennessey and a handful of his pals from military academy form the Junior Officers' Reading Club. By the time he reaches Afghanistan and the rest of the club are scattered across the Middle East, they are no longer cheerfully overconfident young recruits, hungering for action and glory. Hennessey captures how boys grow into men amid the frenetic, sometimes exhilarating violence, frequent boredom, and almost overwhelming responsibilities that frame a soldier's experience and the way we fight today. (368 pages / $26) John S. Strong unravels the storm of influences shaping the received narratives of two iconic sacred objects.
Bodily relics such as hairs, teeth, fingernails, pieces of bone—supposedly from the Buddha himself—have long served as objects of veneration for many Buddhists. Unsurprisingly, when Western colonial powers subjugated populations in South Asia, they used, manipulated, redefined, and even destroyed these objects to exert control. In The Buddha’s Tooth, John S. Strong examines Western stories, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, surrounding two significant Sri Lankan sacred objects to illuminate and concretize colonial attitudes toward Asian religions. First, he analyzes a tale about the Portuguese capture and public destruction, in the mid-sixteenth century, of a tooth later identified as a relic of the Buddha. Second, he switches gears to look at the nineteenth-century saga of British dealings with another tooth relic of the Buddha—the famous Daḷadā enshrined in a temple in Kandy—from 1815, when it was taken over by English forces, to 1954, when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth II. As Strong reveals, the stories of both the Portuguese tooth and the Kandyan tooth reflect nascent and developing Western understandings of Buddhism, realizations of the cosmopolitan nature of the tooth, and tensions between secular and religious interests. (352 pages / University of Chicago Press / $49) We've lost ourselves. Disconnected from the past and uncertain about the future, we are anxious about what our lives will be and troubled by a nagging sense of meaninglessness. Adrift in the world, many Christians have their identity completely wrapped up in work and their definition of the "good life" is financial success. Fewer of are staying committed to the Christian faith, finding it difficult to reconcile their experience with their longings and desires. With so much uncertainty, where can we find a true vision of "the Good Life"?
Learning the Good Life speaks to this malaise with trusted and assured voices from the past, inviting Christians into an age-old conversation with some of history's wisest hearts and minds as their dialogue companions. Featuring classic writings from a diverse lineup of over 35 writers and thinkers. Together these sages of the past address important issues such as:
Writers and writings featured in Learning the Good Life include:
(Hardcover / 320 pages / $51) Explore ideas, consider the big questions and learn life lessons in your garden.
Gardening is an innately thoughtful as well as practical pastime: planning ahead, imagining how plants will grow, deciding what will make a 'good' garden, wondering at the beauty of flowers and noticing how ecosystems work. This delightful and engaging collection of essays illustrate how many philosophical ideas arise naturally in gardeners’ everyday work.
In Philosophy for Gardeners, Kate Collyns uses aspects of gardening to introduce and explore a range of philosophical ideas and schools of thought; cultivating a greater understanding and appreciation of intriguing concepts, propagated from science, evolution and aesthetics through to politics, economics and ethics. Broken into four sections, Soil, Growth, Harvest and Cycles, each section explores questions of philosophy through the lens of the garden. A fascinating read, this book is as perfect for students of philosophy as it is for gardeners, filled with thought-provoking reflections on life, being and existence. (Hardcover / 144 pages / $30) A sparkling anthology of newly commissioned writing on the joys and rewards of reading non-fiction.
Why read non-fiction? Is it just to find things out? Or is it for pleasure, challenge, adventure, meaning? Here, in seventy new pieces, some of the most original writers and thinkers of our time give their answers. From Hilton Als on reading as writing's dearest companion to Nicci Gerrard on reading for her life; from Malcolm Gladwell on entering the minds of others to Michael Lewis on books as secret discoveries; and from Lea Ypi on the search for freedom to Slavoj Žižek on violent readings, each offers their own surprising perspective on the simple act of turning a page. The result is a celebration of seeing the world in new ways - and of having our minds changed. (176 pages / $20) Fast-paced, funny, and brimming with tales of the delightful things children say and do, Nasty, Brutish & Short is a unique guide to the art of thinking.
Say 'philosopher,' and someone grand, old and bearded might come to mind. But, as philosophy professor Scott Hershovitz shows in this delightful debut, some of the best philosophers in the world are better described as nasty, brutish and short-that is to say, they're children. Children make wonderful philosophers because they constantly question things that grown-ups take for granted, test theories about the people around them, and try to work out the way the world works. Following the lead of his two young sons, Rex and Hank, Hershovitz takes us on a unique tour through classical and contemporary philosophy, steered by questions like, does Hank have the right to drink Fanta? When is it okay to swear? And, does the number six exist? Alongside Rex and Hank, Hershovitz investigates big questions about rights, revenge, punishment and authority; questions about sex, gender and race; and questions about the nature of truth and knowledge, the size of the universe, and the existence of god. The result is an invigoratingly fresh way of thinking through the moral, social, and existential issues that most of us have learned to ignore, and an irresistible invitation to become more discerning thinkers, by cultivating our innate, childlike wonder at the world. (Hardcover / 384 pages / $47) About the author: Scott Hershovitz is director of the Law and Ethics Program and professor of law and philosophy at the University of Michigan. He holds a BA in philosophy and politics from the University of Georgia, a JD from Yale Law School, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Professor Hershovitz served as a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. A smart and thought-provoking cultural history of heaven.
What do we think of when we think about heaven? What might it look like? Who or what might be there? Since humans began to huddle together for protection thousands of years ago, these questions have been part of how civilizations and cultures define heaven, the good place beyond this one. From Christianity to Islam to Hinduism and beyond, from the brush of Michelangelo to the pen of Dante, people across millennia have tried to explain and describe heaven in ways that are distinctive and analogous, unique and universal. In this engrossing cultural history of heaven, Catherine Wolff delves into how people and cultures have defined heaven over the centuries. She describes how different faiths and religions have framed it, how the sense of heaven has evolved, and how nonreligious influences have affected it, from the Enlightenment to the increasingly nonreligious views of heaven today. Wolff looks deep into the accounts of heaven to discover what's common among them and what makes each conception distinct and memorable. The result is Beyond, an engaging, thoughtful exploration of an idea that is central to our humanity and our desire to define an existence beyond death. (352 pages / $29) Since its publication in 1974, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has established itself as a modern classic of popular philosophy; selling millions of copies and inspiring a generation, while serving as a perennial touchstone for the generations that follow. On Quality is a remarkable contribution to our understanding of one of the most influential thinkers and writers of our time
Though Robert M. Pirsig was revered by fans who considered him a guru, the famously private author published only two books and consented to few interviews and almost no public appearances in later decades. Yet he wrote and thought almost continually, refining his “Metaphysics of Quality” until his death in 2017. Now, for the first time, readers will be granted access to five decades of Pirsig’s personal writings in this posthumous collection that illuminates the evolution of his thinking to an unprecedented degree. Skillfully edited and introduced by Wendy K. Pirsig, Robert’s wife of four decades, the collection includes previously unpublished texts, speeches, letters, interviews, and private notes, as well as key excerpts from Zen and the Art of the Motorcycle Maintenance and his second book, Lila. (Hardcover / 192 pages / $47). Delving into the mind and soul of one of Singapore’s most prominent performance artists.
Writer, biographer and mental health advocate, Chan Li Shan takes us on a path of discovery while painting a vivid and searingly honest picture of a man many knew of, but few really knew. Along the way, she learns almost as much about herself as she does about the enigmatic artist Lee Wen. Chan Li Shan is a PhD candidate at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, where she has been awarded the Biography Prize for her work on Lee Wen. Her memoir, A Philosopher’s Madness, was published in 2012. She was Director of the Writing Centre and Writing Residency Fellow at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh. (176 pages / $29) More Singapore titles in our Fresh Sing Read catalogue A collection of essays about the joys and struggles of being alone by 22 literary writers including: Lev Grossman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lena Dunham, Jesmyn Ward, Yiyun Li, and Anthony Doerr
If you’re feeling lonely or if you’ve ever felt unseen, if you’re emboldened by solitude or secretly longing for it: Welcome to The Lonely Stories. This cathartic collection of essays illuminates an experience that so few of us openly discuss. Some stories are heartbreaking, such as Jesmyn Ward’s reckoning with the loss of her husband and Dina Nayeri’s reflection on immigrating to a foreign country. Others are witty, such as Lev Grossman’s rueful tale of heading to the woods or Anthony Doerr’s struggles with internet addiction. Still others celebrate the clarity of solitude, like Claire Dederer’s journey toward sobriety and Lidia Yuknavitch’s sensual look at desire. Thoughtful and affirming, The Lonely Stories reveals the complexities of an emotion we’ve all felt—reminding us that we’re not alone. (272 pages / $30) In this memoir, through both her words and illustrations, Janine Mikosza revisits the fourteen houses she lived in before turning eighteen. Homesickness explores how we remember, the myriad ways a child’s trauma lives on in an adult’s body, responsibility versus accountability, and the shift from silence to finding a voice. It is about finally being believed when speaking the truth, and the consequences of a decades-long silence.
(288 pages / $32) A project almost a decade in the making, Homesickness began as a series of rough notes and floor plans of houses drawn from Janine’s memory. Find out more in this article: Share House Project reveals lasting - and surprising - impact of childhood homes The perennial question asked of all authors is, 'How do you write?'. What do they require of their room or desk? Do they have favourite pens, paper or typewriters? And have they found the perfect daily routine to channel their creativity? Crossing centuries, continents and genres, Alex Johnson has pooled 50 of the best writers and transports you to the heart of their writing rooms - from attics and studies to billiard rooms and bathtubs.
Discover the ins and outs of how each great writer penned their famous texts, and the routines and habits they perfected. Meet authors who rely on silence and seclusion and those who need people, music and whisky. Meet novelists who travel half-way across the world to a luxury writing retreat, and others who just need an empty shed at the bottom of the garden. Some are particular about pencils, inks, paper and typewriters, and some will scribble on anything - including the furniture. But whether they write in the library or in cars, under trees, private islands, hotel rooms or towers - each of these stories confirms that there is no 'best way' to write.
In looking at the working lives of our favourite authors, bibliophiles will be transported to other worlds, aspiring writers will find inspiration and literature fans will gain deeper insight into their most-loved authors. (Hardcover / 192 pages / $43) Think of any scene of disaster and you'll find Sikh volunteers rallying to the site to perform seva - pronounced 'say-va', meaning selfless service - feeding migrant workers, helping riot victims, and cleaning up after earthquakes and floods. Why has this 30 million strong community become the world's Good Samaritan? What is it about their values that makes so many of them do so much good? And how is it that they're also able to channel so much joy and laughter while serving others?
Through science-based studies, interviews with Sikhs and a look at history and fables, Seva unlocks seven Sikh-inspired rules to help anyone become kinder, happier and lead a more meaningful life. A secular handbook for the modern world, Seva is a beautiful, inspiring and moving book that will change you from the inside out. (Hardcover / 256 pages / $26) In the aftermath of World War II, a succession of mass supernatural events swept through war-torn Germany. A messianic faith healer rose to extraordinary fame, prayer groups performed exorcisms, and enormous crowds traveled to witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder. What linked these events, in the wake of an annihilationist war and the Holocaust, was a widespread preoccupation with evil.
While many histories emphasize Germany’s rapid transition from genocidal dictatorship to liberal democracy, A Demon-Haunted Land places in full view the toxic mistrust, profound bitterness, and spiritual malaise that unfolded alongside the economic miracle. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials, acclaimed historian Monica Black argues that the surge of supernatural obsessions stemmed from the unspoken guilt and shame of a nation remarkably silent about what was euphemistically called “the most recent past.” This shadow history irrevocably changes our view of postwar Germany, revealing the country’s fraught emotional life, deep moral disquiet, and the cost of trying to bury a horrific legacy. (Hardcover / 352 pages / $50) Translated from the French by Alex Wermer-Colan
In 1949, Jean Cocteau spent twenty days in New York, and began composing on the plane ride home this essay filled with the vivid impressions of his trip. With his unmistakable prose and graceful wit, he compares and contrasts French and American culture: the different values they place on art, literature, liberty, psychology, and dreams. Cocteau sees the incredibly buoyant hopes in America’s promise, while at the same time warning of the many ills that the nation will have to confront—its hypocrisy, sexism, racism, and hegemonic aspirations—in order to realize this potential. Never before translated into English, Letter to the Americans remains as timely and urgent as when it was first published in France over seventy years ago. (64 pages / $23) In Sally Bayley's childhood, the men were often missing. Missing because they were drunk, or out of work, or wandering. Or missing because their behaviour meant women banned them from the house.
The man who was around for Sally was Shakespeare, and he brought men with him to fill the gaps. Sally grew up with a troupe of sad kings and lonely heroes. Her mind ran away from home with Falstaff and Prince Hal, with deceivers and mavericks and geniuses. This is Sally's story of her childhood - one lived with darkness snapping at heels, with real and imagined people passing through interchangeably, and with trauma a spiky memory to be skirted and avoided. Inventive, literary and adventurous, this is a story of hard childhood and a testament to the way that great literature and its characters can guard an imagination against the bad. (272 pages / $22) Sally Bayley is currently a Lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford. She also teaches academic writing, literature, film and creative writing for the Sarah Lawrence visiting programme at Wadham College, Oxford. From 2018-2020 she was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible—a good-enough life for all.
Avram Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread political and economic inequality, and destruction of the natural world. He describes how to move beyond greatness to create a society in which everyone flourishes. By competing less with each other, each of us can find renewed meaning and purpose, have our material and emotional needs met, and begin to lead more leisurely lives. Alpert makes no false utopian promises, however. Life can never be more than good enough because there will always be accidents and tragedies beyond our control, which is why we must stop dividing the world into winners and losers and ensure that there is a fair share of decency and sufficiency to go around. Visionary and provocative, The Good-Enough Life demonstrates how we can work together to cultivate a good-enough life for all instead of tearing ourselves apart in a race to the top of the social pyramid. (Hardcover / 336 pages / Princeton University Press / $37) One night, Brooklyn-based artist and food writer Hannah Kirshner received a life-changing invitation to apprentice with a “saké evangelist” in a misty Japanese mountain village called Yamanaka. In a rapidly modernizing Japan, the region–a stronghold of the country’s old-fashioned ways–was quickly becoming a destination for chefs and artisans looking to learn about the traditions that have long shaped Japanese culture.
Kirshner put on a vest and tie and took her place behind the saké bar. Before long, she met a community of craftspeople, farmers, and foragers–master woodturners, hunters, a paper artist, and a man making charcoal in his nearly abandoned village on the outskirts of town. Kirshner found each craftsperson not only exhibited an extraordinary dedication to their work but their distinct expertise contributed to the fabric of the local culture. Inspired by these masters, she devoted herself to learning how they work and live. Taking readers deep into evergreen forests, terraced rice fields, and smoke-filled workshops, Kirshner captures the centuries-old traditions still alive in Yamanaka. Water, Wood, and Wild Things invites readers to see what goes into making a fine bowl, a cup of tea, or a harvest of rice and introduces the masters who dedicate their lives to this work. Part travelogue, part meditation on the meaning of work, and full of her own beautiful drawings and recipes, Kirshner’s refreshing book is an ode to a place and its people, as well as a profound examination of what it means to sustain traditions and find purpose in cultivation and craft. (368 pages / $32) Discover the traditional stories and wisdom behind your favourite yoga poses in this stunningly illustrated book of Indian mythology for yogis of all levels.
A beautifully written introduction to Indian mythology, join storyteller, scholar and teacher, Dr Raj Balkaran, and explore the unforgettable tales behind 50 key yoga poses, such as:
Plunge into the depths of one of the richest myths in Hinduism: the battle between the demons and the gods who churn the cosmic oceans in search for the elixir of immortality. Learn, through the mythology of the poses, more about the roots of this ancient practice and how you can use their teachings to better appreciate and respect yoga’s true origins.
Enhance your practice by reading one story before or at the end of class, and incorporating the poses and their teaching into your life, as well as your yoga practice, and transform the way you view and practice this timeless art. (Hardcover / 224 pages / $44) Written on the eve of the Second World War, this memoir tells the remarkable story of how 21-year-old Thomas Firbank (1910 - 2000) decided on impulse to purchase a 2,400-acre hill farm in the rugged, inhospitable mountains of Snowdonia, and how he and his wife struggled to build it back into prosperity.
The book became an international bestseller, selling over half-a-million copies worldwide and pioneered the genre of 'good life' rural escape literature. This new edition is introduced with a foreword by the award-winning nature writer, Patrick Barkham, and includes an afterword by contemporary Welsh sheep farmer, Dafydd Morris-Jones. I Bought a Mountain is a thrilling human tale of tragedy and triumph, as well as a portrait of a lost era when farming was a communal endeavour, offering precious insights into conservation and sustainability relevant for today. (Hardcover / 288 pages / $38) In an era defined by stress and selfishness, self-care, and obsessive individuality, emptiness can offer peace.
A balm for the soul of burnt-out Millennials – disillusioned with the search for meaning through career success, a beautiful life and a beautiful Instagram account – The Sunny Nihilist explains why achievement has not made us happy. Looking anew at a philosophy usually associated with grumpy pessimists, writer Wendy Syfret examines our modern experience of work, love, religion and wider society, and asks whether a touch of upbeat nihilism could actually lighten our loads. Making the case for rejecting the cult of purpose and accepting our un-importance in the universe as a positive reality, The Sunny Nihilist urges us to be cheerful in the face of it – because if nothing matters, we might as well be happy and good to each other. (192 pages / $22) Chinese Pictures is a loving reproduction of the photograph collection first published by the intrepid traveller Isabella Bird in 1900. The images were all taken by Isabella on her long travels in China in the late 1890s, and provide a unique record of different aspects of China in that era, just before the Boxer Rebellion and its aftermath unleashed far-reaching changes.
"Bird’s photographs are far more often of places or buildings than people, which gives a good idea of what a traveler might see when casually walking around—they are not contrived or posed, and in an era when photography was barely out of its infancy must have really made readers feel that Bird’s book was the nearest thing to actually being there, a feeling which is still present today, and fortunately Earnshaw Books has done an excellent job of reproducing the photographs. Everyday objects, too, such as a wheelbarrow, coffins and astronomical instruments are among the everyday objects captured in time by Bird’s ubiquitous camera." Asian Review of Books (140 pages / $35) An eye-opening memoir revealing the stories behind living in and running a Chinese takeaway.
Growing up in a Chinese takeaway in rural Wales, Angela Hui was made aware at a very young age of just how different she and her family were seen by her local community. From attacks on the shopfront (in other words, their home), to verbal abuse from customers, and confrontations that ended with her dad wielding the meat cleaver; life growing up in a takeaway was far from peaceful. But alongside the strife, there was also beauty and joy in the rhythm of life in the takeaway and in being surrounded by the food of her home culture. Family dinners before service, research trips to Hong Kong, preparing for the weekend rush with her brothers – the takeaway is a hive of activity before a customer even places their order of ‘egg-fried rice and chop suey’. Bringing readers along on the journey from Angela’s earliest memories in the takeaway to her family closing the shop after 30 years in business, this is a brilliantly warm and immersive memoir from someone on the other side of the counter. (Hardcover / 352 pages / $40) Angela Hui is an award-winning journalist and editor from South Wales. She runs the @chinesetakeawaysuk Instagram account documenting Chinese takeaways up and down the country and sharing the stories of unseen workers in the hospitality industry. The so-called “Book Towns” of the world are dedicated havens of literature, and the ultimate dream of book lovers everywhere. Book Towns takes readers on a richly illustrated tour of the 40 semi-officially recognized literary towns around the world and outlines the history and development of each community, and offers practical travel advice.
Many Book Towns have emerged in areas of marked attraction, such as Ureña in Spain or Fjaerland in Norway, where bookshops have been set up in buildings including former ferry waiting rooms and banks. While the UK has the best-known examples at Hay, Wigtown and Sedbergh, the book has a broad international appeal, featuring locations such as Jimbochu in Japan, College Street in Calcutta, and major unofficial “book cities” such as Buenos Aires. (Hardcover / 192 pages / $35) A thoughtful book that celebrates "staycations" at a time when the world is grappling with the future of travel.
Why do we travel in the first place? It’s an urgent question in these days of climate crisis and global instability. Staying closer to home makes good sense: it’s cheaper, easier, less stressful and better for our health as well as the health of the planet. But Jenny doesn’t suggest that we should abandon all future travel plans. Instead, she shows travellers of all kinds how we can still harness the spirit of travel through the art of the ‘staycation’. In The Art of Being a Tourist at Home, Jenny Herbert takes us on a journey through our neighbourhood streets and our local parks, through museums and libraries, art galleries and bookshops - all without the stress involved in planning a holiday. The Art of Being a Tourist demonstrates that travelling at home offers the greatest potential for us to discover what contributes to our wellbeing and our happiness. (Hardcover / 144 pages / $27) With over 20 years working in the tourism industry, and as a keen traveler herself, Jenny Herbert knows tourism from both sides. Her 2008 book The Intelligent Traveller was a guide to travelling well, how we might distinguish real travel from "McTourism", and how we need to be respectful and responsible travelers. Much about world tourism has changed since 2008 and Jenny recognizes the need to revisit the reasons why we travel, and the urgency to consider alternatives, without foregoing wonder, excitement and adventure. With a PhD in writing behind her, Jenny has turned her attention to demonstrating that much of what drives wanderlust can be satisfied right here at home. And without costing the earth. In Bright Stars, Kate Bryan examines the lives and legacies of 30 great artists who died too young, celebrating their inspirational stories and extraordinary talent.
Some of the world's greatest and most-loved artists died under the age of forty. But how did they turn relatively short careers into such long legacies? What drove them to create, against all the odds? And how can we use these stories to re-evaluate artists lost to the shadows, or whose legacies are not yet secured? Most artists have decades to hone their craft, win over the critics and forge their reputation, but that's not the case for the artists in this book. Art heavyweights Vincent van Gogh and Jean-Michel Basquiat have been mythologised, with their early deaths playing a key role in their posthumous fame. Others, such as Aubrey Beardsley and Noah Davis, were driven to create, knowing their time was limited. For some, premature death, compounded by gender and racial injustice, meant being left out of the history books - as was the case with Amrita Sher-Gil, Charlotte Salomon and Pauline Boty, now championed by Kate Bryan in this important re-appraisal. And, as Caravaggio and Vermeer's stories show us, it can take centuries for forgotten artists to be given the recognition they truly deserve. With each artist comes a unique and often surprising story about how lives full of talent and tragedy were turned into brilliant legacies that still influence and inspire us today. This is a celebration of talent so great it shines on. Beautifully illustrated with portraits of the artists, as well as reproductions of some of their most famous works. (Hardcover / 224 pages / $34) The Artists Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Caravaggio, Dash Snow, Vincent van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, Francesca Woodman, Ana Mendieta, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Raphael, Yves Klein, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Mapplethorpe, Egon Schiele, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Amrita Sher-Gil, Johannes Vermeer, Robert Smithson, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley, Noah Davis, Eva Hesse, Charlotte Salomon, Umberto Boccioni, Gerda Taro, Joanna Mary Boyce, Pauline Boty, Helen Chadwick, Khadija Saye, Bartholomew Beal. In the 1940s and '50s, comic books were some of the most popular-and most unfiltered-entertainment in the United States. Publishers sold hundreds of millions of copies a year of violent, racist, and luridly sexual comics to Americans of all ages, until a 1954 Senate investigation led to a censorship code that nearly destroyed the industry. But this was far from the first time the US government actively involved itself with comics-it was simply the most dramatic manifestation of a long, strange relationship between high-level policy makers and a medium that even artists and writers often dismissed as a creative sewer.
In Pulp Empire, Paul S. Hirsch uncovers the gripping untold story of how the US government both attacked and appropriated comic books to help wage World War II and the Cold War, promote official-and clandestine-foreign policy, and deflect global critiques of American racism. As Hirsch details, during World War II-and the concurrent golden age of comic books-government agencies worked directly with comic book publishers to stoke hatred for the Axis powers while simultaneously attempting to dispel racial tensions at home. Later, as the Cold War defense industry ballooned-and as comic book sales reached historic heights-the government again turned to the medium, this time trying to win hearts and minds in the decolonizing world through cartoon propaganda. Hirsch's groundbreaking research weaves together a wealth of previously classified material, including secret wartime records, official legislative documents, and caches of personal papers. His book explores the uneasy contradiction of how comics were both vital expressions of American freedom and unsettling glimpses into the national id-scourged and repressed on the one hand and deployed as official propaganda on the other. Pulp Empire is a riveting illumination of underexplored chapters in the histories of comic books, foreign policy, and race. (Hardcover / 334 pages / $50) An original collection of lauded philosopher Galen Strawson's writings on the self and consciousness, naturalism and pan-psychism.
Galen Strawson might be described as the Montaigne of modern philosophers, endlessly curious, enormously erudite, unafraid of strange, difficult, and provocative propositions, and able to describe them clearly--in other words, he is a true essayist. Strawson also shares with Montaigne a particular fascination with the elastic and elusive nature of the self and of consciousness. Of the essays collected here, "A Fallacy of Our Age" (an inspiration for Vendela Vida's novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name) takes issue with the commencement-address cliché that life is a story. Strawson questions whether it is desirable or even meaningful to think about life that way. "The Sense of the Self" offers an alternative account, in part personal, of how a distinct sense of self is not at all incompatible with a sense of the self as discontinuous, leading Strawson to a position that he sees as in some ways Buddhist. "Real Naturalism" argues that a fully naturalist account of consciousness supports a belief in the immanence of consciousness in nature as a whole (also known as panpsychism), while in the final essay Strawson offers a vivid account of coming of age in the 1960s. Drawing on literature and life as much as on philosophy, this is a book that prompts both argument and wonder. (240 pages / $31) Medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. Over centuries, women's bodies have been demonised and demeaned until we feared them, felt ashamed of them, were humiliated by them. But as doctors, researchers, campaigners and most of all as patients, women have continuously challenged medical orthodoxy. Medicine's history has always been, and is still being, rewritten by women's resistance, strength and incredible courage.
In this ground-breaking history Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women's bodies, illness and pain. From the 'wandering womb' of ancient Greece to today's shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women is the revolutionary story of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical misogyny. Drawing on Elinor's own experience as an unwell woman, this is a powerful and timely expose of the medical world and woman's place within it. (496 pages / $24) Dr Elinor Cleghorn is a feminist cultural historian. After receiving her PhD in 2012, Elinor spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher at the Ruskin School, University of Oxford, working on an interdisciplinary medical humanities project. READING TOGETHER is the quintessential guide for parents interested in starting a book club with their kids.
Written by a group of moms and their now-grown children, who started meeting while the kids were in first grade, this how-to book shares the dos and don'ts they learned over more than 100 meetings and 100 books. Brimming with insight and inspiration, READING TOGETHER includes the details of organizing and structuring meetings, tips on finding diverse books and choosing titles that spur discussion, common challenges and how to overcome them, and more, as well as sidebars throughout where the children share anecdotes in their own voices. Also included are plenty of curated booklists with brilliant recommendations for middle grade and YA readers across genres, from sci-fi to mystery, adventure, graphic novels, and more. In an inviting, family-friendly package filled with adorable illustrations, this book is a go-to gift and self-buy for bookish parents who hope to raise a reader and connect with their community through the magic of books. (Hardcover / 208 pages / $35) “Lovely, hilarious, and seriously thought-provoking.” TONI MORRISON
Shawn seems to start from the premise that the world ought to be a place where all of us can lie around on cushions writing letters and love poems to each other on multi-coloured paper, as perhaps the women and men of the eleventh-century Heian court in Japan were able to do. Why do we not inhabit a world in which beauty, sensuality, and the adoration of other people, other beings, and the natural world are our principal preoccupations? Why, instead, are we obsessed with a joyless struggle for supremacy over each other? Why have we invented races and nations? Is what we call “civilization” the precipitating cause of our destructiveness and viciousness, our sadism, our love of murder? Shawn himself grew up as a child of privilege and has devoted his life to aesthetic pursuits and hedonism. Has the life he’s led provided him with any sort of valuable vantage point from which to view the world, or has he simply been a parasite? As he himself feels that the answer isn’t clear, a certain self-questioning underlies these essays, along with a nagging doubt about whether we’re right to insist that all of our different qualities and aspects cohere into a single “self.” If the self is simply an illusion, how can we understand “ourselves”? And if we don’t understand ourselves, what conclusions should we draw from that? SLEEPING AMONG SHEEP UNDER A STARRY SKY is a collection of essays written over the course of the last thirty-five years. (Hardcover / 195 pages / $36) What did your face look like before your parents were born? Who are you? What is your true self? These are the questions in Ruth Ozeki's mind as she challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording every thought and detail.
What follows are a lifetime's worth of meditations on race, ageing, family, death, the body, self-doubt and, finally, acceptance. In this profound encounter with memory and the mirror, Ozeki weaves together personal history, professional experience, Zen philosophy, Japanese culture and more to paint a rich, intimate and utterly unique portrait of a life as told through a face. (144 pages / $23) Arthur Conan Doyle was not simply the creator of the world's greatest detective; he was also an intrepid traveler and extraordinary travel writer. His descriptions of his journeys and adventures--which took him to the Arctic and the Alps, throughout Africa, Australia and North America, and across every ocean in between--are full of insight, humor and exceptional evocations of place. Until now, these captivating travelogues have never been gathered together.
In this ground-breaking book, Andrew Lycett, Conan Doyle's celebrated biographer, collects and annotates the best of his writings from around the world, which illuminate not just the places he visited, but the man himself. (336 pages / $28) Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Travels introduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights.
The Book of Travels is Ḥannā Diyāb’s remarkable first-person account of his travels as a young man from his hometown of Aleppo to the court of Versailles and back again, which forever linked him to one of the most popular pieces of world literature, the Thousand and One Nights. Diyāb, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyāb and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, Ḥannā Diyāb met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyāb, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyāb at Louis XIV’s Royal Library, Diyāb returned to Aleppo. In his old age, he wrote this engaging account of his youthful adventures, from capture by pirates in the Mediterranean to quack medicine and near-death experiences. (468 pages / New York University Press / $29) The Utopians is the remarkable story of six experimental communities – Santiniketan-Sriniketan in India, Dartington Hall in England, Atarashiki Mura in Japan, the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, the Bruderhof in Germany and Trabuco College in America – that sprang up in the aftermath of the First World War.
Each was led by charismatic figures who dreamed of a new way of living. Rabindranath Tagore, Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, Mushanokoji Saneatsu, G. I. Gurdjieff, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold and Gerald Heard all struggled to turn ambitious ideals into reality. They – and their fellow communards – left their jobs, their homes and their social circles. They faced mockery and persecution, penury, hunger and discomfort, and their own doubts about whether their efforts to change society would ever make a difference. Anna Neima’s absorbing and vivid account of these collectives, from creation to collapse, reveals them to be full of eccentric characters, outlandish lifestyles and unchecked idealism. They were dramatic, fractious places where high ideals collided with the need to feed the chickens, clean the toilets, bring up squabbling children and grow the grain for the daily bread. These communities were small in scale and dismissed in their time. Yet, a century later, their influence still resonates in realms as disparate as progressive education, environmentalism, medical research and mindfulness training. They provided, and continue to provide, a rich store of inspiration for those who aspire to improve the world. Without them, the post-war world would have been a poorer place. (320 pages / $25) Anna Neima is a writer and historian, who specialises in the experimental communities that sprang up around the globe in the aftermath of the First World War. Renowned for her poetry, Sylvia Plath was also a brilliant writer of prose. This collection of short stories, essays, and diary excerpts highlights her fierce concentration on craft, the vitality of her intelligence, and the yearnings of her imagination. Featuring an introduction by Plath's husband, the late British poet Ted Hughes, these writings also reflect themes and images she would fully realize in her poetry. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams truly showcases the talent and genius of Sylvia Plath. (400 pages / $20)
For more than four hundred years, the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum struck terror into the hearts of authors, publishers, and booksellers around the world, while arousing ridicule and contempt from many others, especially those in Protestant and non-Christian circles. Biased, inconsistent, and frequently absurd in its attempt to ban objectionable texts of every conceivable description—with sometimes fatal consequences—the Index also reflected the deep learning and careful consideration of many hundreds of intellectual contributors over the long span of its storied evolution. This book constitutes the first full study of the Index of Prohibited Books to be published in English. It examines the reasons behind the Church’s attempts to censor religious, scientific, and artistic works, and considers not only why this most sustained of campaigns failed, but what lessons can be learned for today’s debates over freedom of expression and cancel culture.
The first comprehensive history of the Catholic Church’s notorious Index, with resonance for ongoing debates over banned books, censorship, and free speech. (Hardcover / 352 pages / University of Chicago Press / $54) Tabletop board games are having a comeback, and especially within a younger, tech-y audience who enjoys the challenge and opportunity to work in an analog sphere. Game design expert Jesse Terrance Daniels teaches all the fundamentals of game design, from rule-setting to physical construction, along with original illustrations that capture the ethos and energy of the young, contemporary gaming community.
Readers will learn the “building blocks” of game design, including game components, rules, and gameplay mechanics, and then how to craft a game, with a variety of examples and design prompts. After completing Make Your Own Board Game, readers are equipped with a broad understanding of game construction and flow and ready to create games that are playable and satisfying, while also expressing the makers’ unique creativity and passions. (144 pages / $34) From making a cup of coffee to negotiating traffic to selecting candidates for an interview, we can’t make it through the day without employing some essential mathematics.
Did you know that there are some serious calculations involved in making the perfect cup of coffee (involving ratios)? That an understanding of Braess's paradox will mean you can remain calm about road closures on your commute as they may make your journey faster (using equations relating to speed/distance/time)? Or that your online shopping habit can teach you about game theory (mathematical models of strategies)? Full of easy-to-understand mathematics and fun, Mathmatters is your essential guide to understanding the rules and measures that surround us every day, and determine the outcome of every move we make, every button we press and much of our decision-making, whether we are aware of it or not. (Hardcover / 192 pages / $31) Do you know that you can calculate the exact cost of love and whether or not your past relationships were worth it? Check out "The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale" by Haley McGee" towards the end of this catalogue Comedian Robin Ince quickly abandoned science at school, bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations. But, twenty years later, he fell in love and he now presents one of the world’s most popular science podcasts. Every year he meets hundreds of the world’s greatest thinkers.
In this erudite and witty book, Robin reveals why scientific wonder isn’t just for the professionals. Filled with interviews featuring astronauts, comedians, teachers, quantum physicists, neuroscientists and more – as well as charting Robin’s own journey with science – The Importance of Being Interested explores why many wrongly think of the discipline as distant and difficult. From the glorious appeal of the stars above to why scientific curiosity can encourage much needed intellectual humility, this optimistic and profound book will leave you filled with a thirst for intellectual adventure. (400 pages / $25) Blue is the most widely beloved color - but in nature, it's the rarest hue of all. True, physics paints the sea and sky blue, but we can't bottle this trick of the light. And blue pigment requires such complex chemistry that blue creatures, plants, and minerals are few indeed. Artists and kings have treasured blue dye like precious gold since the time of the pharoahs - and who today can help but marvel at a morpho butterfly in the rain forest or a blue jay at the window?
Science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt has been enraptured by blue since childhood. In his quest to understand the mysteries of his favorite color, he takes readers on a vivid journey - from a biotech lab in Japan and a volcanic lake in Oregon to his native Germany, home of the last blue-feathered Spix's macaws. Deep underground where blue crystals grow, and miles overhead where astronauts gaze at our "blue marble" planet - wherever he finds this alluring color, it always has a story to tell. (224 pages / $33) Beautifully illustrated, a stirring and wide-ranging reflection on art, technology, culture—and the full-length mirror.
This book tells two stories about the full-length mirror. One story, through time and space, crisscrosses the globe to introduce a broad range of historical actors: kings and slaves, artists and writers, merchants and craftsmen, courtesans, and commoners. The other story explores the connections among objects, painting, and photography, the full-length mirror providing a new perspective on historical artifacts and their images in art and visual culture. The Full-Length Mirror represents a new kind of global art history in which “global” is understood in terms of both geography and visual medium, a history encompassing Europe, Asia, and North America, and spanning over two millennia from the fourth century BCE to the early twentieth century. (288 pages / The University of Chicago Press /$54) |
An illustrated collection of stories about dogs that knew how to sit, stay, and witness history
Most dog lovers know Fido and Laika, but how about Martha, Paul McCartney's Old English Sheepdog? Or Peritas, Alexander the Great’s trusted canine companion? As long as there have been humans, those humans have had beloved companions—their dogs. From the ancient Egyptians mummifying their pups, to the Indian legend of the king who refused to enter the afterlife unless his dog was allowed there too, to the modern meme and popularity of terms like the corgi sploot, humans are undeniably obsessed with their dogs. old in short, illustrated essays that are interspersed with both historical and canine factoids, The History of the World in Fifty Dogs brings to life some of history’s most memorable moments through the stories of the dogs that saw them happen.
(Hardcover / 176 pages / $35) Berlin, 1962. Morale is at rock bottom in East Germany, thrown into chaos by the new Berlin Wall. The Ministry for State Security is hunting for a new weapon in the war against capitalism - and their solution is stranger than fiction. Rather than guns, tanks, or bombs, the Stasi resolve to fight the enemy through rhyme and verse, winning the Culture Wars through poetry - and the result is the most bizarre book club in history.
Consisting of 15 secret agents - from WW2 veterans to schoolboy recruits - the 'Working Group of Writing Chekists' met monthly from 1962 until the Wall fell. In a classroom adorned with portraits of Lenin, the spies wrote their own poetry and were taught verse, metre, and rhetoric by East German poet Uwe Berger. The regime hoped that poetry would sharpen the Stasi's 'party sword' by affirming the spies' belief in the words of Marx and Lenin, as well as strengthening the socialist faith of their comrades. But as the agents became steeped in poetry, revelling in its imaginative ambiguity, the result was the opposite. Rather than entrenching state ideology, they began to radically question it - and following a radical role reversal, the GDR's secret weapon dramatically backfired. Weaving unseen archival material with exclusive interviews from surviving members, Philip Oltermann reveals the incredible hidden story of a unique experiment: weaponising poetry for politics. Both a gripping true story and a parable about creativity in a surveillance state, this is The Lives of Others meets Dead Poets Society - and history writing at its finest. (224 pages / $30) Hong Kong has long been known as a city of extremes—a former colony of the United Kingdom that today exists at the margins of an authoritarian, ascendant China; a city rocked by mass protests, where residents once rallied against threats to their democracy and freedoms. But it is also misunderstood and often romanticized, its history and politics simplified for Western headlines.
Drawing richly from her own experience, as well as interviews with musicians, protesters, and writers who have made Hong Kong their home, journalist Karen Cheung gives us an insider's view of this remarkable city at a critical moment in history-both for Hong Kong and democracies around the world. Cheung gives a personal account of what it's like to seek out affordable housing and mental healthcare in one of the world's most expensive cities. She also takes us deep into Hong Kong's vibrant indie music and literary scenes-youth-driven spaces of creative resistance. Inevitably, Cheung brings us with her to the protests, where her understanding of what it means to belong to Hong Kong finally crystallized. (Hardcover / 352 pages / $38) Engaging and enlightening, this well-rounded collection includes Lewis’ reflections on science fiction, why children’s literature is for readers of all ages, and why we should read two old books for every new one.
C. S. Lewis continues to speak to readers thanks to not only his intellectual insights on Christianity but also his wondrous creative works and deep reflections on the literature that impacted his life. Beloved for his teaching novels like Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Chronicles of Narnia as well as his narrative books that explored theology and Christian life, Lewis was a long-time writer and lover of books of every kind. Cultivated from his many essays, articles, letters, as well as his classic works, How to Read is a collection of Lewis’s writings that provides both guidance and reflections on the love and enjoyment of books. A lens into the thoughts of one of the greatest public intellectuals of our time, this collection reveals what Lewis himself loved so much about reading and what it means to learn through literature–all in one accessible volume. (192 pages / $19) 'This book is a delight … the world is full of little surprises, momentary little fountains of pleasure and beauty, that could be visible to all of us if we learned to stop and notice as Miranda Keeling does.' Philip Pullman
January: A man walking along Caledonian Road falls over onto the huge roll of bubble wrap he is hugging, perhaps for just this sort of situation. Inspired by her popular Twitter account, The Year I Stopped to Notice brings together Miranda Keeling's observations of the magic, humour, strangeness and beauty in ordinary life. Through the changing seasons, on city streets and on buses, in parks and cafes, Miranda notices things: moments between friends, the interactions of strangers, children delighting in the world around them, the quiet melancholy of lost items on the pavement. Accompanied by stunning watercolour illustrations from Luci Power, Miranda's poetic vignettes take us on journeys of discovery and share with us the joy of stopping to notice. "An odd, beautiful book ... Buy an extra copy to give to someone you love" Neil Gaiman (Hardcover / 192 pages / $24) Close friendships are a heart-warming feature of many of our best-loved works of fiction.
This book explores twenty-four literary friendships and, together with character studies and publication history, describes how each key relationship influences character, determines plot, promotes or disguises romance, preserves a reputation, sometimes results in betrayal, or underlines the theme of each literary work. It shows how authors from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferrante have by turns celebrated, lamented or transformed friendships throughout the ages, and how some friends – Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Holmes and Watson or even Bridget Jones and pals – have taken on creative lives beyond the bounds of their original narrative. Including a broad scope of literature spanning a period of 400 years from writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, John Steinbeck and Alice Walker, this book is the ideal gift for your literature-loving friend. (Hardcover / 208 pages / $38) He is no longer him, today. At ten, he saw a chicken beheaded in his backyard, he too, an accomplice. He roamed his village, sometimes barefoot, wading through streams, backyards of his neighbors’ houses where young men were high, smoking ganja. He once saw a group of men in red headbands with Arabic words on them, ready to march to the capital city to slaughter many.
He fought demons, wept when the family dog died battling a cobra. He saw men in a trance, munching on broken glasses and hibiscus petals, high on Javanese trance-dance music, turning into horses. A spaceship landed on the school field. He thought he died, shot by Martians. He was saved from being a Taliban. Saved by the music of the American Hippies. He confronted a boy in a green robe and white turban, preaching jihad against Western music. He chased the young mullah out of the school. His story told in the language of the Sixties. Of Beat poetry. Of rap, joyfully, he now narrates with melancholy. Azly Rahman presents a mixed-genre memoir-snippets of growing up in a world rooted in the pastoral-ness and ruralness of things. The world of his kampong or the Malay village. The central theme is “growing up gangsta” in a Malay village that offered the realism and the supernaturalism of things, seen through the lens of a boy in his early teens. (224 pages / $29) About the author: Dr. Azly Rahman is an educator, academic, international columnist, and author of eight books. Born in Singapore, he grew up in a Malay village in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. He holds a doctorate in International Education Development from Columbia University in the City of New York, and Master's degrees in six areas: education, international affairs, peace studies communication, fiction and non-fiction writing. Fairy-Tales are not just fairy-tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores the secret history of fairy-tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them.
While there are certain names inextricably entwined with the concept of a fairy-tale, such as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the most significant tellers are long buried under the more celebrated figures who have taken the credit for their stories - people like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab and the Wild Sisters of Cassel. Without them we would never have heard of Aladdin, his Magic Lamp or the adventures of Hansel and Gretel. Tracking these stories to their sources carries us through the steaming cities of Southern Italy and across the Mediterranean to the dust-clogged alleys of the Maghreb, under the fretting leaves of the Black Forest, deep into the tundra of Siberia and across the snowy hills of Lapland. From North Africa and Siberia, this book illuminates the complicated relationship between Western civilisation and the 'Eastern' cultures it borrowed from, and the strange lives of our long lost fairy-tellers. (336 pages / $28) Merlin remains the most famous and familiar image of the magician we possess. Best known as the advisor of the young King Arthur, he was also a famous seer, whose books of prophecies have been reprinted countless times since the Middle Ages and are still in print today. He has reappeared in numerous guises in modern times, in film, TV and books, as well as being studied as an exponent of shamanism, seership and ancient wisdom.
Arthurian expert John Matthews examines the many guises of Merlin - as seer, prophet, magician and, perhaps surprisingly, as lover, and as an inspirer of people from all walks of life. He traces the historical origin of Merlin as a Celtic warrior, the later literary forms of his growing legend in the myths of Arthur, and his more recent manifestations in fantasy writing. Also explored is the important connection between Merlin and the Druids. Spanning the ages and delving into some of the most colourful corners of human history, The Book of Merlin presents a new look at an age-old character. The author has provided a new translation of the poems of Myrddin Wyllt, Merlin's prophecies in the wilderness: 'Snow to my knees, ice in my beard.' (Hardcover / 288 pages / $43) Don’t just read the Bible literally—read it Literarily.
A lot of times, we treat Scripture like it’s all the same from Genesis to Revelation. After all, it only has one Author. Isn’t it just one big book, identical from beginning to end? While it’s true that the Bible is unified, it is also diverse. The Bible can be grouped according to key categories, called genres, that help us to read and properly interpret the Scriptures. An understanding of these genres, and the literary themes and devices used within them, makes all the difference when encountering God’s Word. Long-time Bible teacher Kristie Anyabwile discovered as she prepared her lessons that a single inductive approach doesn’t do justice to the variety of genres that make up the Word of God. Because Scripture is a collection of writings that spans 1,500 years, many literary styles are represented and each must be taken into account for the fullest understanding of God’s Word. Kristie shows you the immense value of studying the Bible literarily—that is, according to the literary style presented in a particular book, chapter, or passage. In Literarily, Kristie will take you through these eight distinct genres:
The Bible is an epic story that God has revealed to us through diverse genres and literary features. Its message and method are both meant to transform our hearts. Our goal as interpreters isn’t to meld the Scriptures into a bland conglomerate, but to recognize the multiple forms in which God’s Word comes to us. In so doing, we’ll encounter the ongoing story of Jesus’s redemption and learn how He calls His people to live in our complex world today. (160 pages / $26) This book is about how to relate to your own
thoughts and emotions in a way that makes your life more enjoyable, more free, brighter, clearer and wiser. At the age of twenty-six, Bjurn Natthiko Lindeblad abandoned a promising career, gave away all his possessions, and left his loved ones to become a forest monk. For seventeen years he lived according to the rules of the monastery. After returning to Swedish society, he was met with the diagnosis of a progressive, incurable disease- ALS. In I May Be Wrong, he shares his hard-won insights into how one can live a more present life, and what stands out as most important when things are coming to an end. The result is a beautiful, powerful and urgent last lesson on how we can live more peacefully with ourselves, and come to accept the uncertainty that is a part of all we do. Björn Natthiko Lindeblad (Buddhist name Natthiko Bhikku, 16 August 1961 – 17 January 2022) was a Swedish economist, lecturer, and Buddhist monk. In 2020, he released the book Jag kan ha fel och andra visdomar från mitt liv som buddhistmunk. The English translation of the book, titled I May Be Wrong And Other Wisdoms from Life as a Forest Monk, is scheduled to be released on 17 February 2022. On 17 January 2022, Lindeblad died of euthanasia at the age of 60, surrounded by his loved ones.
(256 pages / $30) A Columbia University physician comes across a popular medieval text on dying well written after the horror of the Black Plague and discovers ancient wisdom for rethinking death and gaining insight today on how we can learn the lost art of dying well.
As a specialist in both medical ethics and the treatment of older patients, Dr. L. S. Dugdale knows a great deal about the end of life. Far too many of us die poorly, she argues. Our culture has overly medicalized death: dying is often institutional and sterile, prolonged by unnecessary resuscitations and other intrusive interventions. We are not going gently into that good night—our reliance on modern medicine can actually prolong suffering and strip us of our dignity. Yet our lives do not have to end this way. Centuries ago, in the wake of the Black Plague, a text was published offering advice to help the living prepare for a good death. Written during the late Middle Ages, ars moriendi--The Art of Dying—made clear that to die well, one first had to live well and described what practices best help us prepare. When Dugdale discovered this Medieval book, it was a revelation. Inspired by its holistic approach to the final stage we must all one day face, she draws from this forgotten work, combining its wisdom with the knowledge she has gleaned from her long medical career. Dr. Dugdale offers a hopeful perspective on death and dying as she shows us how to adapt the wisdom from the past to our lives today. The Lost Art of Dying is a vital, affecting book that reconsiders death, death culture, and how we can transform how we live each day, including our last. (272 pages / $29) A humorous graphic investigation of the author's obsession with true crime, the murders that have most captivated her throughout her life, and a love letter to her fellow true-crime fanatics.
Why is it so much fun to read about death and dismemberment? In Murder Book, lifelong true-crime obsessive and New Yorker cartoonist Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell tries to puzzle out the answer. An unconventional graphic exploration of a lifetime of Ann Rule super-fandom, amateur armchair sleuthing, and a deep dive into the high-profile murders that have fascinated the author for decades, this is a funny, thoughtful, and highly personal blend of memoir, cultural criticism, and true crime with a focus on the often-overlooked victims of notorious killers. (336 pages / $34) In this hilarious and heartfelt memoir, Haley McGee sets out to calculate—with mathematical precision—the exact cost of love, and whether all of her former relationships were worth it.
Haley McGee is in debt. The solution? A yard sale of gifts from her ex-boyfriends. But when it comes to pricing, she gets stuck. Surely the ways we invest in our romantic relationships should be reflected in the price. But how? Is the mixtape from your first love worth more than the vintage typewriter from a philanderer? Does sitting on an X-Acto knife wedged between seats on a bus to see the boyfriend you lost your virginity to increase or decrease the value of the necklace he gave you? Should you be compensated for the miserable times or do they render an item worthless? Haley decides to gamble on a larger payout. She interviews her exes and enlists the help of a mathematician to create a formula—with eighty-six variables—for the cost of love. As she’s searching for answers, the one that got away reappears with a new proposition. Female desire, heartbreak and the chance for integrity in the aftermath of both are held up in this whipsmart, original and daringly candid memoir. As Haley McGee interrogates her romantic triumphs and failures with unflinching detail and hilarity, her exquisite prose elevates this all too human conundrum: Is love worth it? (392 pages / $29) Levitation. Feats of superhuman strength. Speaking in tongues. A hateful, glowing stare. The signs of spirit possession have been documented for thousands of years and across religions and cultures, even into our time: In 2019 the Vatican convened 250 priests from 50 countries for a weeklong seminar on exorcism. The Penguin Book of Exorcisms brings together the most astonishing accounts: Saint Anthony set upon by demons in the form of a lion, a bull, and a panther, who are no match for his devotion and prayer; the Prophet Muhammad casting an enemy of God out of a young boy; fox spirits in medieval China and Japan; a headless bear assaulting a woman in sixteenth-century England; the possession in the French town of Loudun of an entire convent of Ursuline nuns; a Zulu woman who floated to a height of five feet almost daily; a previously unpublished account of an exorcism in Earling, Iowa, in 1928–an important inspiration for the movie The Exorcist; poltergeist activity at a home in Maryland in 1949–the basis for William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist; a Filipina girl “bitten by devils”; and a rare example of a priest’s letter requesting permission of a bishop to perform an exorcism–after witnessing a boy walk backward up a wall. Fifty-seven percent of Americans profess to believe in demonic possession; after reading this book, you may too.
(336 pages / $29) In my case, reading has always served a dual purpose. In a positive sense, it offers sustenance, enlightenment, the bliss of fascination. In a negative sense, it is a means of withdrawal, of inhabiting a reality quarantined from one that often comes across as painful, alarming or downright distasteful. In the former sense, reading is like food; in the latter, it is like drugs or alcohol.
In Autobibliography, Rob Doyle recounts a year spent rereading fifty-two books - from the Dhammapada and Marcus Aurelius, via The Tibetan Book of the Dead and La Rochefoucauld, to Robert Bolano and Svetlana Alexievich - as well as the memories they trigger and the reverberations they create. It is a record of a year in reading, and of a lifetime of books. Provocative, intelligent and funny, it is a brilliant introduction to a personal canon by one of the most original and exciting writers around. It is a book about books, a book about reading, and a book about a writer. It is an autobibliography. (Hardcover / 256 pages / $28) From one of our most widely admired art critics comes a bold and timely manifesto reaffirming the independence of all the arts—musical, literary, and visual—and their unique and unparalleled power to excite, disturb, and inspire us.
As people look to the arts to promote a particular ideology, whether radical, liberal, or conservative, Jed Perl argues that the arts have their own laws and logic, which transcend the controversies of any one moment. “Art’s relevance,” he writes, “has everything to do with what many regard as its irrelevance.” Authority and Freedom will find readers from college classrooms to foundation board meetings—wherever the arts are confronting social, political, and economic ferment and heated debates about political correctness and cancel culture. Perl embraces the work of creative spirits as varied as Mozart, Michelangelo, Jane Austen, Henry James, Picasso, and Aretha Franklin. He contends that the essence of the arts is their ability to free us from fixed definitions and categories. Art is inherently uncategorizable—that’s the key to its importance. Taking his stand with artists and thinkers ranging from W. H. Auden to Hannah Arendt, Perl defends works of art as adventuresome dialogues, simultaneously dispassionate and impassioned. He describes the fundamental sense of vocation—the engagement with the tools and traditions of a medium—that gives artists their purpose and focus. Whether we’re experiencing a poem, a painting, or an opera, it’s the interplay between authority and freedom—what Perl calls “the lifeblood of the arts”—that fuels the imaginative experience. This book will be essential reading for everybody who cares about the future of the arts in a democratic society. (Hardcover / 176 pages / $34) Why do we make things by hand? And why do we make them beautiful? Led by the question of why working with our hands remains vital and valuable in the modern world, author and maker Melanie Falick went on a transformative, inspiring journey.
Traveling across continents, she met quilters and potters, weavers and painters, metalsmiths, printmakers, woodworkers, and more, and uncovered truths that have been speaking to us for millennia yet feel urgently relevant today: We make in order to slow down. To connect with others. To express ideas and emotions, feel competent, create something tangible and long-lasting. And to feed the soul. In revealing stories and gorgeous original photographs, Making a Life captures all the joy of making and the power it has to give our lives authenticity and meaning. (Hardcover / 320 pages / Published by Artisan / $60) Growing up on a council estate in Essex in the 80s, Tom frequently witnessed his dad horrifically abuse his mum. He would physically and sexually harm her, drag her down the street, then the next morning bring her tea and toast. It went on for years and Tom never told anyone.
As the only boy in the family, Tom had a strange dynamic with his dad. He knew he was a monster. But, at the same time, this was his dad, and the fact remained that he loved him. It was only after his father’s death and becoming a father to a boy himself that Tom began to realise the full extent of the trauma his family had endured and the influence it had on their lives. In this tragic memoir, Tom Mitchelson explores the complex, toxic relationship he had with his father. (Hardcover / 304 pages / $34) Censorship of one form or another has existed almost as long as the written word, while definitions of what is "acceptable" in published works have shifted over the centuries, and from culture to culture.
Banned Books explores why some of the world's most important literary classics and seminal non-fiction titles were once deemed too controversial for the public to read-whether for challenging racial or sexual norms, satirizing public figures, or simply being deemed unfit for young readers. From the banning of All Quiet on the Western Front and the repeated suppression of On the Origin of Species, to the uproar provoked by Lady Chatterley's Lover, entries offer a fascinating chronological account of censorship, and the astonishing role that some banned books have played in changing history. Packed with eye-opening insights into the history of the written word, and the political and social climate during the period of suppression or censorship, this is a must-read for anyone interested in literature, creative writing, politics, history, or law. (Hardcover / 192 pages / $31) What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics?
In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, her life as an immigrant in the United States, and her role as literature professor in both countries, she crafts an argument for why, in a genuine democracy, we must engage with the enemy, and how literature can be a vehicle for doing so. Structured as a series of letters to her father, who taught her as a child about how literature can rescue us in times of trauma, Nafisi explores the most probing questions of our time through the works of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, and more. (Hardcover / 240 pages / $47) Emma Reyes was an illegitimate child, raised in a windowless room in Bogotá with no water or toilet and only ingenuity to keep her and her sister alive. Abandoned by her mother, she moved with her sister to a Catholic convent, where she scrubbed floors and mended garments for the nuns—and lived in fear of the Devil. Illiterate and knowing nothing of the outside world, she escaped at age nineteen, eventually establishing a career as an artist, befriending the likes of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as well as European artists and intellectuals, and being encouraged in her writing by Gabriel García Márquez.
Comprised of letters written over the course of thirty years, this astonishing memoir describes in painterly detail the remarkable courage and limitless imagination of a young girl growing up with nothing. Discovered only after Reyes’s death, it reveals a gifted writer whose talent remained hidden for far too long. (208 pages / $28) A modern classic with over 250,000 copies sold, Honey for a Child's Heart is a compelling, essential guide for parents who want to find the best books for their children ages 0-12.
A good book is a gateway into a wider world of wonder, beauty, delight, and adventure. But children don't stumble onto the best books by themselves. They need a parent's help. illustrated with drawings from dozens of children's favorites, Honey for a Child's Heart Updated and Expanded includes completely updated book lists geared to your child's age and filled with nearly one thousand longtime favorites, classics, wonderful new books, and audiobooks that will enrich your child's life. It will also show you how to: ~ Understand the importance of being a read-aloud family, enjoying books together by reading aloud ~ Give your children a large view of the world, of truth, and of goodness ~ Encourage each child's imagination and good use of language ~ Find the best books for your children Thousands of parents have used this guide to furnish their children's inner spirit with the wonder and delight of good reading. Updated and expanded to keep pace with the ever-changing world of children's literature, it is sure to enrich the cultural and spiritual life of your home. (272 pages / $38) This comprehensive volume showcases hundreds of their well-known illustrations, as well as many never-before-seen paintings, drawings, and exquisite sketchbooks from their travels around the world. An interview with their daughter Karen Provensen Mitchell illuminates their life and career and includes many personal photographs, quotes, speeches, and memorabilia from their archive. An introduction by Leonard S. Marcus, a leading historian in children's literature, underscores the Provensen's importance and influence as illustrators and authors. Additionally, noted publisher and close family friend Robert Gottlieb, provides a personal essay that shares many of his memories with this cherished couple.
The Provensens' colorful, inimitable artwork is a treasure trove that has influenced generations of children, designers, illustrators, historians, and all who cherish classic children's (Hardcover / 240 pages / $77) The Art of Alice and Martin Provensen is the first-ever monograph on this beloved midcentury husband-and-wife illustration team. This award-winning pair created more than 40 beloved children's books over the span of seven decades, many of which appeared on the New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year lists.
This beautiful collection brings together passages from the renowned stories, poems, dramas and myths of South Asian literature, including the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa.
Drawing on the translations published by the Clay Sanskrit Library, the book presents episodes from the adventures of young Krishna, the life of Prince Rama and Hindu foundational myths, the life of the Buddha, as well as Buddhist and Jaina birth stories. Pairing key excerpts from these wonderful Sanskrit texts with exquisite illustrations from the Bodleian Library’s rich manuscript collections, the book includes images of birch-bark and palm-leaf manuscripts, vibrant Mughal miniatures, early printed books, sculptures, watercolour paintings and even early photograph albums. Each extract is presented in both English translation and Sanskrit in Devanagari script, and is accompanied by a commentary on the literature and related books and artworks. The collection is organised by geographical region and includes sections on the Himalayas, North India, Central and South India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia, Tibet, Inner and East Asia, and the Middle East and Europe. This is the perfect introduction for anyone interested in Sanskrit literature and the manuscript art of South Asia – and beyond. (Hardcover / 240 pages / 120 pages / $125) How many times have words not been enough?
How many complex feelings don’t have a corresponding noun that properly describes them? How many times has language left us like an archer without arrows in the labyrinth of our emotions? Award-winning author Stefano Massini, a master of expression,, made a discovery that shot new life into his writing practice. To his surprise he found that the ancient rules of language were not quite as restrictive as he had long envisioned them to be. With so many emotions and states of mind missing modern descriptors and definitions, Massini stumbled across a simple but artistry-altering idea. Instead of compromising honest expression through perfunctory verbiage, he decided language was, if anything, a flowing palette of colors he could use to paint all things. Words are meant to be invented. To reconfirm his belief in the magic of words, Massini returned to the wondrous mechanism that has fed dictionaries from time immemorial. If he could not find the precise word he wanted, he created one. In this delightful compendium, he introduces his personal vocabulary; every chapter mentions a new word that comes from a story about a real person, from Louis XIV to an American gangster. The Book of Nonexistent Words is a beautifully illustrated collection of linguistic origin stories wrought from the mind of an internationally renowned storytelling icon. Massini effectively liberates our human capacity for using language creatively and shows how we can embrace storytelling to fine tune our way of being in the world. Massini encourages us to be imaginative; if the language in the dictionary cannot adequately match the reality of the here and now, we must create new words that ring true. (272 pages / $41) Why do some book covers instantly grab your attention, while others never get a second glance? Fusing word and image, as well as design thinking and literary criticism, this captivating investigation goes behind the scenes of the cover design process to answer this question and more.
As the outward face of the text, the book cover makes an all-important first impression. The Look of the Book examines art at the edges of literature through notable covers and the stories behind them, galleries of the many different jackets of bestselling books, an overview of book cover trends throughout history, and insights from dozens of literary and design luminaries. Co-authored by celebrated designer and creative director Peter Mendelsund and scholar David Alworth, this fascinating collaboration, featuring hundreds of covers, challenges our notions of what a book cover can and should be. (Hardcover / 256 pages / $80) What advice can one give a green young author? What purpose do literary prizes serve? Where on earth can a man get a decent bite to eat? This entertaining collection is vintage Kingsley Amis, revealing him at his most robust and incisive, cutting a swathe through such subjects as writers and writing, 'Abroad', eating and drinking, music, language and education. He turns a clear and critical eye on Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Anthony Burgess, Ian Fleming and Philip Larkin, and does not spare their potential readers in 'Sod the Public: A Consumer's Guide'. In typically razor-sharp, wicked and witty prose, Amis tackles the culture and conceits of his era.
(512 pages / $30) WELCOME TO THE BARBIZON, NEW YORK’S PREMIER WOMEN-ONLY HOTEL
Built in 1927 as a home for the ‘Modern Woman’ seeking a career in the arts, the Barbizon became the place to stay for ambitious, independent women, who were lured by the promise of fame and good fortune. Sylvia Plath fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, and over the years, its 688 tiny floral ‘highly feminine boudoirs’ also housed Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly (notorious for sneaking in men), Joan Didion, Candice Bergen, Charlie’s Angel Jaclyn Smith, Ali MacGraw, Cybil Shepherd, Elaine Stritch, Liza Minnelli, Eudora Welty, The Cosby Show’s Phylicia Rashad, Grey Gardens’s Edith Bouvier Beale, and writers Mona Simpson and Ann Beattie, among many others. Mademoiselle boarded its summer interns there – perfectly turned-out young women, who would never be spotted hatless – as did Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School its students – in their white-gloves and kitten heels – and the Ford Modelling Agency its young models. THE BARBIZON is a colourful, glamorous portrait of the lives of the young women, who — from the Jazz Age New Women of the 1920s to the Liberated Women of the 1960s — came to New York looking for something more. (336 pages / $26) As parents we want to safeguard our children from the pressures and influences of the world, but also prepare them for age-appropriate realities. How do we find that balance?
A former English teacher and homeschooling mother of three, Jessica Smartt felt the weight of helping prepare her kids for life, seeking to raise her children with a sense of adventure, self-confidence, manners, faith, and the ability to use technology wisely. Let Them Be Kids is Jessica’s offering of grace and confidence to moms, providing practical ideas to meet the challenge of raising children. Part story, part guidebook, every chapter includes doable parenting strategies and encouragement for the journey, equipping moms with ways to provide a safe, healthy, Christ-centered upbringing for our children. Her well-researched, tested methods, woven together with her personal stories and witty humor, deliver wisdom on tough topics, such as:
If you want to conquer fear and find the truth that transforms entire families, Let Them Be Kids will show you that it's not only possible but essential to enjoy every special moment of building family values together. (256 pages / $33) Still Time to Care tells the untold story of the 'ex-gay' movement in the evangelical church, a 40-year failed experiment to cure homosexuality. It also provides a four-part postmortem and a path forward--a call to the Christian church to embrace their non-straight fellow believers who live lives of costly obedience.
At the start of the gay rights movement in 1969, evangelicalism's leading voices cast a vision for gay people who turn to Jesus. It was C.S. Lewis, Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer and John Stott who were among the most respected leaders within theologically orthodox Protestantism. We see with them a positive pastoral approach toward gay people, an approach that viewed homosexuality as a fallen condition experienced by some Christians who needed care more than cure. With the birth and rise of the ex-gay movement, the focus shifted from care to cure. As a result, there are an estimated 700,000 people alive today who underwent conversion therapy in the United States alone. Many of these patients were treated by faith-based, testimony-driven parachurch ministries centered on the ex-gay script. Despite the best of intentions, the movement ended with very troubling results. Yet the ex-gay movement died not because it had the wrong sex ethic. It died because it was founded on a practice that diminished the beauty of the gospel. Yet even after the closure of the ex-gay umbrella organization Exodus International in 2013, the ex-gay script continues to walk about as the undead among us, pressuring people like me to say, "I used to be gay, but I'm not gay anymore. Now I'm just same-sex attracted." For orthodox Christians, the way forward is a path back to where we were forty years ago. It is time again to focus with our Neo-Evangelical fathers on care--not cure--for our non-straight sisters and brothers who are living lives of costly obedience to Jesus. With warmth and humor as well as original research, Still Time to Care will chart the path forward for our churches and ministries in providing care. It will provide guidance for the gay person who hears the gospel and finds themselves smitten by the life-giving call of Jesus. Woven throughout the book will be Richard Lovelace’s 1978 call for a "double repentance" in which gay Christians repent of their homosexual sins and the church repents of its homophobia--putting on display for all the power of the gospel. (Hardcover / 304 pages / $45) Greg Johnson is Lead Pastor of historic Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA) in St. Louis, where he has served on pastoral staff since 2003. He holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology with a concentration in American religion from Saint Louis University and an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary. Sylvain Tesson, found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. Noting carefully his impressions of the silence, Sylvain Tesson shares with us an extraordinary experience.
Sylvain Tesson is a French writer and traveller born in Paris. He has carried through a number of long and unusual travels and expeditions which are the bases for his books. The Consolations of the Forest, a project to live alone in a Siberian cabin for six months is one of his most famous works. (256 pages / $25) Despite her family's ailing finances, Diana Athill's childhood - spent in a lovely house in Norfolk - was blissful. In 1932, she fell in love with Paul: an undergraduate who tutored her younger brother. Within several years, she had moved to Oxford to study and they were engaged to be married. Then everything fell apart in the cruellest possible way.
Athill's debut is also her most personal: a dissection of personal tragedy and the struggle to rebuild her life amid severe disappointment and loneliness. Unfolding throughout the Second World War, Instead of a Letter is an inspiring story of love and loss, heartbreak and hope, and a testament to her strength of character - her vivacity, honesty and perspicacity. (240 pages / $24) A new perspective on the overused and misunderstood concept of “karma” that offers the key to happiness and enlightenment, from the world-renowned spiritual master Sadhguru
What is karma? Most people understand karma as a balance sheet of good and bad deeds, virtues and sins. The mechanism that decrees that we cannot evade the consequences of our own actions. In reality, karma has nothing to do with reward and punishment. Karma simply means action: your action, your responsibility. It isn’t some external system of crime and punishment, but an internal cycle generated by you. Accumulation of karma is determined only by your intention and the way you respond to what is happening to you. Over time, it’s possible to become ensnared by your own unconscious patterns of behavior. By living consciously and fully inhabiting each moment, you can free yourself from the cycle. Through Sadhguru’s teachings, you will learn how to live intelligently and joyfully in a challenging world.
(Hardcover / 272 pages / $43) This newly translated Fear and Trembling, a founding document of modern philosophy and existentialism, could not be more apt for these perilous times.
First published in 1843 under the pseudonym “Johannes de silentio” (John of Silence), Soren Kierkegaard’s richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W.H. Auden, Walter Benjamin and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Retelling the biblical story of the binding of Isaac, Kierkegaard expounds on the ordeal of Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son in an exceptional test of faith. Disgusted at the self-certainty of his own age, Kierkegaard investigates the paradox underlying Abraham’s decision to allow his duty to God to take precedence over his duties to his family. Now, in a new era of immense uncertainty and dislocation, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Bruce H. Kirmmse, in his accessible translation and engaging introduction, eloquently brings this classic work to a new generation of readers, demonstrating Kierkegaard’s enduring power to illuminate the terrible wonder of faith. (Hardcover / 176 pages / $45) Finnish psychotherapy professionals Antti Ervasti and Elina Rehmonen are on a mission to make mental health visible, shining a light on everyday challenges, big and small, through the charming, imperfect and utterly relatable animal figures of Matti Pikkujamsa's illustrations.
With a host a furry friends to guide you, discover how to tackle everyday problems from Monday morning blues to low self-esteem, burnout to workplace tensions. Combining humour, warmth and wisdom, this book provides practical tips to help establish a better work-life balance and to navigate the challenges and demands of modern life. Whether you need some words of comfort to set you up for the working week, tips on cultivating healthy habits, or a reminder of the importance of self-compassion, you will find your answer in these pages. (Hardcover / 240 pages / $26) Designed to act as an antidote to the intensity of the 24-hour news cycle, What a Wonderful World is a collection of 100 good news stories of positivity, progress and hope.
Welcome to planet Earth, where wonderful things are happening. They’re not always easy to find, but we’re here to help you discover how…. * … ex-military bases in Germany have been transformed into wildlife sanctuaries * … a start-up in the Philippines has created pencils that can be planted after use * … drones are being used to fight deforestation in Brazil So, make yourself comfortable, disconnect from your device and allow yourself a few minutes every night to dip into these tales of hope, and wake up feeling energised and inspired to take on the world anew. (Hardcover / 224 pages / $23) The Lonely Hunter explores the rise of singledom, the realities of loneliness, and whether it is possible to live contentedly alone.
‘So what’s going on in your love life?’ This seemingly innocent question at a dinner party prompted Aimée Lutkin to finally tell the truth: it had been six years since her last relationship, and she was starting to suspect that it would be better to accept the life she had as a single woman — a life she liked very much — rather than keep searching for a partner. But Lutkin’s answer was met with uproar; surely she couldn’t give up on love? So she threw herself into dating, going on two dates every week over a number of months. Documenting her experiences, Lutkin explores the reality of sexual relationships today and reveals how the cultural messages we receive shape our expectations of love. From weird Tinder hookups to the way the self care industry capitalises on our fear of being alone, and from the complexities of queer dating to the truth about the ‘loneliness epidemic’, she uses her experiences to fearlessly tell a wider story about how we love now. (352 pages / $23) Reframe your story–and reclaim your life–through the transformative practice of writing and storytelling.
When Harvard-trained physician Dr. Annie Brewster was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001, she realized firsthand that the medical system to which she’d devoted her entire career was failing patients. The experience was dehumanizing. Her doctors weren’t listening. And the confusion, fear, and shame she felt around her diagnosis was preventing her from truly healing, claiming her story, and living her fullest, richest life. The fact is, doctors can give you a life-changing diagnosis, but they’re not equipped to help you deal with the inner fallout: the confusion, anxiety, trauma, and dread that comes after “I have some bad news.” Here, Dr. Brewster shows how writing your own unique healing story can help you process what comes next–to come to terms, create new ways to thrive, and even reclaim your personal power amid fear, change, and uncertainty. Dr. Brewster and journalist Rachel Zimmerman each share their own personal stories, acting as expert guides as you move forward on your healing journey. With exercises, reflections, writing prompts, and stories from other real patients, Dr. Brewster and Zimmerman show how you can: • Process the difficult emotions that come with life-changing diagnosis • Move beyond being the hero of your own story to become the author of your own story • Craft your narrative and share it in whatever medium speaks to you: music, audio, art, or writing • Integrate a traumatic health event into a new and evolving identity • Use applied storytelling techniques to strengthen connections between you and your loved ones (and even your care providers) • Cultivate resilience to move forward amid uncertainty and fear (200 pages / $31) Annie Brewster is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and a practicing internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. She is also a patient, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001. She has been collecting and sharing patient stories since 2010. In 2013 she founded Health Story Collaborative, a nonprofit organization committed to empowering patients and their loved ones, building community, strengthening patient-provider connections, and ultimately transforming healthcare through storytelling. Why do some writers destroy themselves by drinking alcohol? Before our health-conscious age it would be true to say that many writers drank what we now regard as excessive amounts. Graham Greene, for instance, drank on a daily basis quantities of spirits and wine and beer most doctors would consider as being dangerous to his health. But he was rarely out of control and lived with his considerable wits intact to the age of eighty-six. W. H. Auden drank the most of a bottle of spirits a day, but also worked hard and steadily every day until his death. Even T. S. Eliot, for all his pontifical demeanour, was extremely fond of gin and was once observed completely drunk on a London Tube station by a startled friend. These were not writers who are generally regarded as alcoholics. 'Alcoholic' is, in any case, a slippery word, as exemplified by Dylan Thomas's definition of an alcoholic as 'someone you dislike who drinks as much as you.' The word is still controversial and often misunderstood and misapplied. What acclaimed novelist and poet William Palmer's book is interested in is the effect that heavy drinking had on writers, how they lived with it and were sometimes destroyed by it, and how they described the whole private and social world of the drinker in their work.
He looks at Patrick Hamilton ('the feverish magic that alcohol can work'); Jean Rhys ('As soon as I sober up I start again'); Charles Jackson ('Delirium is a disease of the night'); Malcolm Lowry ('I love hell. I can't wait to go back there'); Dylan Thomas ('A womb with a view'); John Cheever ('The singing of the bottles in the pantry'); Flann O'Brien ('A pint of plain is your only man'); Anthony Burgess ('Writing is an agony mitigated by drink'); Kingsley Amis ('Beer makes you drunk'); Richard Yates ('The road to Revolutionary Road'); and Elizabeth Bishop ('The writer's writer's writer'). (272 pages / $33) Long Live Freedom!
— Hans Scholl's last words before his execution The White Rose (die Weiße Rose) resistance circle was a group of students and a professor at the University of Munich who in the early 1940s secretly wrote and distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets. At its heart were Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Professor Kurt Huber, all of whom were executed in 1943 by the Nazi regime. The youngest among them was just twenty-one years old. This book outlines the story of the group and sets their resistance texts in political and historical context, including archival photographs. A series of brief biographical sketches, along with excerpts from letters and diaries, trace each member’s journey towards action against the National Socialist state. The White Rose resistance pamphlets are included in full, translated by students at the University of Oxford. These translations are the result of work by undergraduates around the same age as the original student authors, working together on texts, ideas and issues. This project reflects a crucial aspect of the White Rose: its collaborative nature. The resistance pamphlets were written collaboratively, and they could not have had the reach they did without being distributed by multiple individuals, defying Hitler through words and ideas. Today, the bravery of the White Rose lives on in film and literature and is commemorated not just in Munich but throughout Germany and beyond. (Hardcover / 160 pages / $35) Cathy is the person who first told me to write about my mental health when I was nervous to do so. She is a great writer herself and this [is] brilliant. Matt Haig, bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and The Midnight Library This is a kind, encouraging and stimulating book that explores the nature of memoir writing and offers helpful guidance on how to write your life on paper. Rentzenbrink will help you to discover the pleasure and solace to be found in writing; the profound satisfaction of wrestling a story onto a page and seeing the events of your life transformed through the experience of writing the self.
Perfect for both seasoned writers as well as writing amateurs and everyone in between, this helpful handbook will steer you through the philosophical and practical challenges of writing the self. Intertwined with reflections, anecdotes and exercises, Write It All Down is at once an intimate and enjoyable narrative and an invitation to share your story. (Hardcover / 240 pages / $33) Cathy Rentzenbrink is the author of the Sunday Times best-seller The Last Act of Love and of A Manual for Heartache, Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books and Everyone is Still Alive. It took her twenty years to wrestle her own life story on the page and she loves to use what she has learnt about the profound nature of writing the self in the service of others.
Cathy has taught for Arvon, Curtis Brown Creative, at Falmouth University and at festivals and in prisons, and welcomes anyone, no matter what their experience, education, background or story. She believes that everyone’s life would be improved by picking up a pen and is at her happiest when encouraging her students to have the courage to delve into themselves and see the magic that will start to happen on the page. Pink castles, talking sofas, and objects coming to life: what may sound like the fantasies of Hollywood dream-maker Walt Disney were in fact the figments of the colorful salons of Rococo Paris. Exploring the novel use of French motifs in Disney films and theme parks, this publication features 40 works of 18th-century European design—from tapestries and furniture to Boulle clocks and Sèvres porcelain—alongside 150 Disney film stills, drawings, and other works on paper.
The text connects these art forms through a shared dedication to craftsmanship and highlights references to European art in Disney films, including nods to Gothic Revival architecture in Cinderella (1950); bejeweled, medieval manuscripts in Sleeping Beauty (1959); and Rococo-inspired furnishings and objects brought to life in Beauty and the Beast (1991). Bridging fact and fantasy, this book draws remarkable new parallels between Disney's magical creations and their artistic inspirations. Wolf Burchard is associate curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Hardcover / 240 pages / 212 Color illustrations / $83) The classic account of ambient music, with a new foreword by Michel Faber.
David Toop's extraordinary work of sonic history travels from the rainforests of Amazonas to the megalopolis of Tokyo via the work of artists as diverse as Brian Eno, Sun Ra, Erik Satie, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk and Brian Wilson. Beginning in 1889 at the Paris exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed, Ocean of Sound channels the competing instincts of 20th century music into an exhilarating, path-breaking account of ambient sound. 'A meditation on the development of modern music, there's no single term that is adequate to describe what Toop has accomplished here ... mixing interviews, criticism, history, and memory, Toop moves seamlessly between sounds, styles, genres, and eras' Pitchfork's '60 Favourite Music Books' (320 pages / $24) David Toop is an English musician, author and professor of audio culture and improvisation at the London College of Communication. He is a regular contributor to The Wire, has recorded Yanomami shamanism in Amazonas, appeared on Top of the Pops, exhibited sound installations in Tokyo, Beijing and London's National Gallery. The remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive health care.
In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness—a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society. Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman’s place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time ever, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges—creating for the first time medical care for women by women. With gripping storytelling based on extensive research and access to archival documents, Women in White Coats tells the courageous history these women made by becoming doctors, detailing the boundaries they broke of gender and science to reshape how we receive medical care today. (368 pages / $31) |