Written with the passion of an obsessive, Nicotine addresses a life of addiction, from the epiphany of the first drag to the perennial last last cigarette. Reflecting on his experiences as a smoker from a young age, Gregor Hens investigates the irreversible effects of nicotine on thought and patterns of behaviours. He extends the conversation with other smokers to meditations on Mark Twain and Italo Svevo, the nature of habit, the validity of hypnosis, and the most insignificant c...

In The City and the World, Gregor Hens explores the city in the twenty-first century – a space we shape and are shaped by in turn – and our place within it. Travelling from Berlin to Las Vegas, Shenzhen to Santiago de Chile, he moves through these pulsing, ever-expanding cityscapes, reading, walking, swimming, riding the metro and catching the bus, bearing witness to the strange vitality of urban life. Everywhere, catalysts for new understandings emerge. Pushing his young daughter...

**NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMISTBy turns philosophical and darkly comic, an ex-smoker’s meditation on the nature and consequences of his nearly lifelong addiction.**Written with the passion of an obsessive, Nicotine addresses a lifelong addiction, from the thrill of the first drag to the perennial last last cigarette. Reflecting on his experiences as a smoker from a young age, Gregor Hens investigates the irreversible effects of nicotine on...

Written with the passion of an obsessive, Nicotine addresses a lifelong addiction, from the thrill of the first drag to the perennial last last cigarette. Reflecting on his experiences as a smoker from a young age, Gregor Hens investigates the irreversible effects of nicotine on thought and patterns of behavior. He extends the conversation with other smokers to meditations on Mark Twain and Italo Svevo, the nature of habit, and the validity of hypnosis. With comic insight and meti...

From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction PrizeA Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How shou...

Helen Humphreys’ younger brother was gone before she could come to terms with the fact that he was terminally ill. Diagnosed with stage 4B pancreatic cancer at the age of forty-five, he died four months later, leaving behind a grieving family. Martin was an extraordinary pianist who debuted at the Royal Festival Hall in London at the age of twenty, later becoming a piano teacher and senior examiner at the Royal Conservatory of Music. The two siblings, though often living far apart, were bo...

A "courageous and singular book" (Andrew Solomon), Memory's Last Breath is an unsparing, beautifully written memoir -- "an intimate, revealing account of living with dementia" ( Shelf Awareness).Based on the "field notes" she keeps in her journal, Memory's Last Breath is Gerda Saunders' astonishing window into a life distorted by dementia. She writes about shopping trips cut short by unintentional shoplifting, car journeys derailed when sh...

A New York Times Notable Book. This "harrowing, lyrical autobiographical memoir . . . is a striking meditation on the distorting effects of our culture's preoccupation with physical beauty" (Publishers Weekly).It took Lucy Grealy twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty reconstructive procedures before she could come to terms with her appearance after childhood cancer and surgery that left her jaw disfigured. As a yo...

From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir about finding meaning in life through acts of creativity and imagination. As seen on PBS American Masters "Unintended Memoir."In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan reveals the ways that our memories and personal experiences can inform our creative work. Drawing on her vivid impressions of her upbringing, Tan in...

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here — with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely.This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work — essays like his famous cruise-ship piece, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," excerpts from his novels The Broom of the Sys...

From "a genuine American Dostoevsky" ( The Washington Post): a dazzling, funny, bittersweet exploration of the mysteries of relationship, both human and animal.When his favorite cat Biscuit goes missing, Peter Trachtenberg sets out to find her. The journey takes him 700 miles and many years into his past-- into the history of his relationships with cats and the history of his relationship with his wife F., who may herself be on the verge of disappearing. Wh...

Is addiction a disease, a sin, a sign of hypersensitivity, a personal failing, or a unique resource for the creative mind? However it is defined, addiction can have devastating consequences, often shattering lives, sundering families, causing impoverishment, and even triggering suicide. Yet it can also be a source of inspiration. In these frank essays, leading American and Canadian writers explore their surprisingly diverse personal experiences with this complex phenomenon, candidly recoun...