ESSAYS
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A new memoir from renowned political activist and author of Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties
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Riding Like the Wind ; The Life of Sanora Babb
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
- University of California Press
- 15 Octobre 2024
- 9780520395442
This saga of a writer done dirty resurrects the silenced voice of Sanora Babb, peerless author of midcentury American literature.
In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In Riding Like the Wind, renowned biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle revives the groundbreaking voice of Sanora Babb.
Dunkle follows Babb from her impoverished childhood in eastern Colorado to California. There, she befriended the era's literati, including Ray Bradbury and Ralph Ellison; entered into an illegal marriage; and was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was Babb's field notes and oral histories of migrant farmworkers that Steinbeck relied on to write his novel. But this is not merely a saga of literary usurping; on her own merits, Babb's impact was profound. Her life and work feature heavily in Ken Burns's award-winning documentary The Dust Bowl and inspired Kristin Hannah in her bestseller The Four Winds. Riding Like the Wind reminds us with fresh awareness that the stories we know—and who tells them—can change the way we remember history. -
The Island ; W. H. Auden and the Last of Englishness
Nicholas Jenkins
- Faber & Faber
- 29 Août 2024
- 9780571239016
A groundbreaking reassessment of W. H. Auden's early life and poetry, shedding new light on his artistic development as well as on his shifting beliefs about political belonging in interwar England.
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Shakespeare's Sisters ; How Women Wrote the Renaissance
Ramie Targoff
- Alfred A. Knopf
- 12 Mars 2024
- 9780525658030
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How to Think Like a Poet ; The Poets That Made Our World and Why We Need Them
Dai George
- Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- 29 Août 2024
- 9781399408295
An entertaining guide to history's most influential and inspiring poets – from Homer and Sappho to Shakespeare and Frank O'Hara – and how they can teach us to better understand the world around us.
How did the greatest poets in history make the world anew? And what can we learn from the magic, wisdom and humour of their poetry? From the genius of the Ancient Greeks through to the love poetry and metaphysics of the Renaissance, through to the New York poets of the 20th century, this is the ultimate guide to the greatest writers of the human age.
Through short, biographical portraits, poet and writer Dai George provides an entertaining introduction to the great works of poetry, and a welcoming guide to how we can read them. He addresses questions poets have grappled with: How can we truly describe the world? How can we express love, grief or friendship? How can poetry help us to understand justice, dreams or anger?
This book paints vivid pictures of a global selection of renowned poets throughout history: from Sappho, Li Bai and Rumi, to William Shakespeare and John Donne, to Frank O Hara, Pablo Neruda and Sylvia Plath. George also seeks to re-examine the canon, traditionally dominated by Western, white and male poets, and bring to light major figures from other important cultures and communities, including China, India and the Caribbean. -
What Writers Read ; 35 Writers on their Favourite Book
Pandora Sykes
- Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- 7 Novembre 2024
- 9781526657497
In this inspiring love letter to reading and the life-changing power of literature, 35 writers share their all-time favourite books
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Featuring some of the most ferocious and humorous book curses ever inscribed, this is a lively and engaging introduction to the history and development of bookish maledictions.
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Literary Journeys ; Mapping Fictional Travels across the World of Literature
- Princeton University Press
- 10 Septembre 2024
- 9780691266398
A beautifully illustrated guide to over seventy-five important journeys in world literature, spanning more than thirty countries and twenty-five hundred years
From Homer’s Odyssey, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Cervantes’s Don Quixote to Melville’s Moby-Dick, Kerouac’s On the Road, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, some of the most powerful works of fiction center on a journey. Extending to the ends of the earth and spanning from ancient Greece to today, Literary Journeys is an enthralling book that takes you on a voyage of discovery through some of the most important journeys in literature. In original essays, an international team of literary critics, scholars, and other writers explore exciting, dangerous, tragic, and uplifting journeys in more than seventy-five classic and popular works of fiction from around the world. Chronologically arranged and gorgeously illustrated throughout with paintings, engravings, photographs, and maps in full color, this captivating book will appeal to readers who have travelled widely, who are planning a trip, or who love armchair travel.
Contributors include Robert McCrum, Susan Shillinglaw, Maya Jaggi, Robert Holden, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Alan Taylor, Michael Bourne, Sarah Mesle—and dozens more. -
The Haunted Wood ; A History of Childhood Reading
Sam Leith
- Oneworld Publications
- 5 Septembre 2024
- 9780861548187
A panoramic and poignant history of children’s literature
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Iona Heath relates the importance that John Berger's work and friendship had on her working life as a GP. It includes extracts from letters that span 20 years of her correspondence with John Berger.
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Shakespeare ; The Man Who Pays The Rent
Judi Dench
- Penguin Books Ltd
- 26 Septembre 2024
- 9781405956420
This Christmas discover the greatest writer in the English language as told by actor Dame Judi Dench in SHAKESPEARE The Man Who Pays The Rent :- a witty, insightful journey through the plays and tales of our beloved bard
‘Wonderfully inspiring. A delightful spell in the company of one of our greatest actresses’ Daily Mail, Books of the Year
‘Gloriously entertaining. Reading it feels like a chat with an old friend’ Observer
‘A magical love letter to Shakespeare’ Kenneth Branagh
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For the very first time, Judi Dench opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played in her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra.
Here, she reveals her behind the scenes secrets; inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour and striking honesty.
This is Judi's love letter to William Shakespeare – the man who pays the rent.
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Praise for The Man Who Pays the Rent
'This book is pure enchantment’ Daily Mail
'This is a gloriously entertaining tour through the canon in the company of perhaps the most experienced living Shakespearean actor' Observer
'An utterly delightful book. An unstoppable stream of anecdotes, recollections and asides' Telegraph
‘Companionable and compelling, mischievous and convivial – it genuinely feels like you’re sitting at her kitchen table with Judi Dench’ Guardian
‘Gorgeous’ Literary Review
‘A wonderful mixture of appreciation and anecdote’ Financial Times, Books of the Year
Instant Sunday Times bestseller, November 2023
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I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me ; Selected Letters and Reflections
Rahel Levin Varnhagen
- Seagull Books London Ltd
- 10 Septembre 2024
- 9781803093369
A personal look into the mind of one of Europe’s first and foremost women of letters.
At times poetic but not a poem, prosaic but not an essay, a letter is often pure writing for writing’s sake. Such is the case for Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, née Levin, the illustrious German-Jewish Berlin literary salon hostess from the early nineteenth century. She penned over ten thousand letters to more than three hundred recipients, including princes, philosophers, poets, family members, and the family cook. Written with a wink at posterity, collected and first published after her passing by her husband, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, these letters constitute a singular contribution to German literature.
Varied in subject—from family affairs to linguistic, literary, and pressing social concerns—the poignant lyricism of her letters is all the more remarkable when we take into account that High German was not her first language; she grew up speaking, reading, and writing primarily Yiddish. Her shaky social status as a woman and a member of a precarious minority, combined with an astounding lucidity and a rare capacity to put her thoughts into words, made her a force to be reckoned with in her lifetime and thereafter as one of Germany’s preeminent women of letters. As we see in I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me, her voice is as fresh and original as that of any of the recognized poets and thinkers of her day. As Rahel herself put it: “[O]ur language is our lived life; I invented mine for my own purposes, I was less able than many others to make use of preconceived turns of phrase, which is why mine are often clumsy, and in all respects faulty, but always true.”
Compiled and translated by Peter Wortsman, this rewarding volume affords English-speaking readers the first privileged peek at the mindset of one of Europe’s first and foremost women of letters.
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Orpheus in the Underworld ; Essays on Music and Its Mediation
Theodor W. Adorno
- Seagull Books London Ltd
- 2 Août 2024
- 9781803093222
Delves into Theodor W. Adorno’s lesser-known musical career and successful music criticism.
Theodor W. Adorno is recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most prominent social theorists. Though best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, Adorno began his career as a composer and successful music critic.
Comprehensive and illuminating, Orpheus in the Underworld centers on Adorno’s concrete and immediate engagement with musical compositions and their interpretation in the concert hall and elsewhere. Here, Adorno registers his initial encounters with the compositions of the Second Viennese School, when he had yet to integrate them into a broad aesthetics of music. Complementarily essays on Bela Bartók, Jean Sibelius, and Kurt Weill afford insight into his understanding of composers who did not fit neatly into the dialectical schema propounded in the Philosophy of New Music. Additionally, essays on recording and broadcasting show Adorno engaging with these media in a spirit that is no less productive than polemical and focused as sharply on their potentialities as on their shortcomings.
Orpheus in the Underworld offers a captivating exploration of Adorno’s musical compositions, shedding new light on his understanding of influential composers and his critical perspectives on recording and broadcasting. -
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Nine Minds ; Inner Lives on the Spectrum - THE INSTANT BESTSELLER
Daniel Tammet
- Profile Books Ltd
- 11 Juillet 2024
- 9781800811119
A celebration of neurodiversity - meet nine extraordinary people on the autism spectrum
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The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim ; The Woman Who Invented Freud's Talking Cure
Gabriel Brownstein
- PublicAffairs,U.S.
- 2 Mai 2024
- 9781541774643
The extraordinary life of a brilliant woman whose contributions to science have been lied about and misused-the Henrietta Lacks of psychoanalysis-and whose mental health struggles look different in light of newly emerging research.
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Mortal Secrets ; Freud, Vienna and the Discovery of the Modern Mind
Frank Tallis
- Little, Brown Book Group
- 7 Mars 2024
- 9781408713754
Like Sarah Bakewell's How to Live and Andrea Wulf's Magnificent Rebels, Mortal Secrets is a lively and accessible portrait of a major figure - Sigmund Freud - and the unprecedented era of creativity that shaped his ideas
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Natural Magic ; Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science
Renée Bergland
- Princeton University Press
- 30 Avril 2024
- 9780691235288
A captivating portrait of the poet and the scientist who shared an enchanted view of nature
Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and modern thinkers challenged the old orthodoxies, offering thrilling new perspectives that suddenly felt radical—and too dangerous for women.
Natural Magic intertwines the stories of these two luminary nineteenth-century minds whose thought and writings captured the awesome possibilities of the new sciences and at the same time strove to preserve the magic of nature. Just as Darwin’s work was informed by his roots in natural philosophy and his belief in the interconnectedness of all life, Dickinson’s poetry was shaped by her education in botany, astronomy, and chemistry, and by her fascination with the enchanting possibilities of Darwinian science. Casting their two very different careers in an entirely fresh light, Renée Bergland brings to life a time when ideas about science were rapidly evolving, reshaped by poets, scientists, philosophers, and theologians alike. She paints a colorful portrait of a remarkable century that transformed how we see the natural world.
Illuminating and insightful, Natural Magic explores how Dickinson and Darwin refused to accept the separation of art and science. Today, more than ever, we need to reclaim their shared sense of ecological wonder. -
A collection of colorful and candid essays and other pieces about Freud and his legacy today, featuring twenty-five leading writers
With original contributions by André Aciman • Sarah Boxer • Jennifer Finney Boylan • Susie Boyt • Gerald Early • Esther Freud • Rivka Galchen • Adam Gopnik • David Gordon • Siri Hustvedt • Sheila Kohler • Peter D. Kramer • Phillip Lopate • Thomas Lynch • Daphne Merkin • David Michaelis • Rick Moody • Susie Orbach • Richard Panek • Alex Pheby • Michael S. Roth • Casey Schwartz • Mark Solms • Colm Tóibín • Sherry Turkle
W. H. Auden described Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) as “a whole climate of opinion / Under whom we conduct our differing lives.” The controversial father of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Freud charted the human unconscious, brought us the talking cure, and wrote books that now rank among the classics of world literature. In On the Couch, the great analyst is analyzed by some of today’s great writers and thinkers, who help us understand the man who has helped us understand ourselves as much, if not more, than anyone else, ever. The result is a fresh, multifaceted reassessment of Freud’s continuing relevance and influence on ideas, literature, culture, science, and more.
Here, Colm Tóibín writes about Freud, World War I, Henry James, and Thomas Mann; Adam Gopnik explores Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents; Susie Orbach considers Freud’s “ordinary unhappiness” and D. W. Winnicott’s “good enough”; Jennifer Finney Boylan reflects on penis envy and gender identity; Peter Kramer describes how new science and drugs have revolutionized psychology since Freud; Susie Boyt, one of Freud’s great-granddaughters, spends the night at the Freud Museum in London; Siri Hustvedt examines Freud’s divided reception today; and there’s much more.
Filled with insights, provocation, and humor, On the Couch offers an original and nuanced portrait of Freud as a complex figure who, for all his flaws, forever changed how we see ourselves and the world. -
The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays
Joan Acocella
- Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
- 18 Mars 2024
- 9780374608095
The New Yorker critic examines the books that reveal and record our world in a new essay collection.
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Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness
Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- 11 Juin 2024
- 9781421448206
Do Jane Austen novels truly celebrate—or undermine—romance and happy endings?How did Jane Austen become a cultural icon for fairy-tale endings when her own books end in ways that are rushed, ironic, and reluctant to satisfy readers' thirst for romance? In Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness, Austen scholar Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey journeys through the iconic novelist's books in the first full-length study of Austen's endings. Through a careful exploration of Austen's own writings and those of the authors she read during her lifetime—as well as recent cultural reception and adaptations of her novels—Brodey examines the contradictions that surround this queen of romance.Brodey argues that Austen's surprising choices in her endings are an essential aspect of the writer's own sense of the novel and its purpose. Austen's fiercely independent and deeply humanistic ideals led her to develop a style of ending all her own. Writing in a culture that set a monetary value on success in marriage and equated matrimony with happiness, Austen questions these cultural norms and makes her readers work for their comic conclusions, carefully anticipating and shaping her readers' emotional involvement in her novels. Providing innovative and engaging readings of Austen's novels, Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness traces her development as an author and her convictions about authorship, novels, and the purpose of domestic fiction. In a review of modern film adaptions of Austen's work, the book also offers new interpretations while illustrating how contemporary ideas of marriage and happiness have shaped Austen's popular currency in the Anglophone world and beyond.
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Orwell’s Ghosts ; Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century
Laura Beers
- C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
- 13 Juin 2024
- 9781911723028
With Orwell claimed by all sides of the culture wars, returning to his own world and words offers sharp and surprising lessons for today’s crises.