Much Ado About Everything is Gary Amdahl's full-throated defense of the novel as a technology of mystery, means by which we might second-handedly engage not only (as one of Amdahl's exemplary figures memorably put it) "nothing that is not there but also the nothing that is." Amdahl's energetic style, his restless interrogation of criticism today, and his willingness to break, burn, blow, and make language his own, create an essay that is at once a call to arms and an affirmation o...

A twelve-year-old boy, middle son in a wealthy, politically and culturally prominent San Francisco family, watches his city disappear in the earthquake and fires of 1906. His father him that nothing has been lost that cannot be swiftly and easily replaced. He quotes Virgil: Nothing unreal is allowed to survive.” The boy turns this stark Stoic philosophical consolation” into the radical theater practices of the day, in the course of which he involves himself with radical labor struggles: ...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world.Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In Living With a Wild God, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find "the Truth" about the universe and...

This companion volume to Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, chronicles his life in 1920s New York City.Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn’s ethnic neighborhoods and Miller’s outrageous sexual exploits, The Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature.“Miller has once and for all blasted away the very foundation of human hyp...

In his bestselling The Soul's Code, James Hillman restored passion and meaning to the concept of identity, arguing that each of us is born with an innate character, the "daimon" or "spirit" that calls us to what we are meant to be. Now, in The Force of Character, Hillman brings the idea of character full circle, offering a revolutionary new vision of life's most feared and misunderstood chapter: old age."Aging is no accident," Hillman writes. "It is necess...

Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . .A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Ho...

What happens when an over-confident prospector finds himself alone with a half-wild dog on a wintry Yukon trail? An enhanced version of Jack Londons classic story. Features an original biography of the author plus more.

"A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke . . . to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review).Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is National Book Award–winning author Walker Percy's humorous take on a familiar genre—as well as an invitation to serious contemplation of life's biggest questions.One part parody and two p...

What is the philosophy of sweat? Reality TV? Domestic warfare? Making up and having sex? Take a sparkling ride through an ordinary day with hilarious philosophical gadfly Robert Rowland Smith in Breakfast with Socrates.Ever want to have a bagel with Hegel? Eggs with Bacon? Or spend a day with Socrates, Mill, Herodotus, or Kant, able to pick their brains about the most mundane moments of your life? Former Oxford Philosophy Fellow Robert Rowland Smith though...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-term Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins comes his first volume of new and selected poems in twelve years.“America’s favorite poet.”—The Wall Street Journal**Aimless Love combines fifty new poems with generous selections from his four most recent books—Nine Horses, The Trouble with Poetry, Ballistics, and Horoscopes for the Dead. Collins’s unmistakable voice, which brings to...

Many appreciate Richard P. Feynman's contributions to twentieth-century physics, but few realize how engaged he was with the world around him -- how deeply and thoughtfully he considered the religious, political, and social issues of his day. Now, a wonderful book -- based on a previously unpublished, three-part public lecture he gave at the University of Washington in 1963 -- shows us this other side of Feynman, as he expounds on the inherent conflict between science and religion, people'...

The best-loved poems from one of American literature's most towering figures No poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. From "The Road Not Taken" to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," he refined and even defined our sense of what poetry is and what it can do. In this volume the folowing poems are selected; Out, Out. A Girl’s Garden. After Apple Picking. Birches. Dust of Snow. Fire and Ice. For Once...