This smash hit and must-read classic about privileged Vassar classmates that shocked America in the sixties remains "juicy . . . witty . . . brilliant" ( Cosmopolitan ).At Vassar, they were known as "the group" —eight young women of privilege, the closest of friends, an eclectic mix of vibrant personalities. A week after graduation in 1933, they all gather for the wedding of Kay Strong, one of their own, before going their...

"A passionate, humane intelligence addressing itself to the fundamental problem of how the mind operates." — NewsweekConsidered by many to be Hannah Arendt's greatest work, published as she neared the end of her life, The Life of the Mind investigates thought itself, as it exists in contemplative life. In a shift from her previous writings, most of which focus on the world outside the mind, this work was planned as three volumes that would explore ...

Tracing her moral struggles to the day she accidentally took a sip of water before her Communion—a mortal sin—Mary McCarthy gives us eight funny and heartrending essays about the illusive and redemptive nature of memory" During the course of writing this, I've often wished that I were writing fiction."Originally published in large part as standalone essays in the New Yorker and Harper's Bazaar, Mary McCarthy's acclaimed memoir begin...

The celebrated author of The Group offers a "clever, witty, polished" portrait of the 1940s NYC literary bohemia she knew so well in this debut novel ( The New York Times).Margaret Sargent is young and fearless, a deep thinker inspired by the bohemian energy that abounds in New York City in the years leading up to the Second World War. With careless abandon, she destroys her marriage and numerous love affairs as she moves through the social circle...

A writer's life is upended by her destructive ex-husband in this intensely personal novel by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group.Former actress and budding playwright Martha Sinnott longs to recapture the "charmed life" she abandoned when she divorced her first husband. So she returns to her beloved New England artists' colony with her second husband—and discovers that little has changed. The same people make up the same tightly k...

The #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group takes readers on a captivating journey to one of the world's most celebrated cities.Mary McCarthy brings her novelist's unerring eye to a book that blends art, politics, religion, music, and history to create a living portrait of "the world's loveliest city."Like a painter capturing the city's essence on canvas, McCarthy uses words to create stunning visuals that bring both the old and n...

Three brilliant novels from a #1 New York Times–bestselling author.Navigating friendship, sex, careers, and the challenges of adulthood, the characters of Mary McCarthy's novels remain instantly relatable, whether they're living in 1930s New York City or 1960s Paris. Here, three of her most outstanding works are collected in one volume.The Group: This "witty . . . brilliant" blockbuster bestseller follows eight privileged girls from their ...

Eloquent and assured, Mary McCarthy's The Stones of Florence beckons the reader on a brisk but sweeping tour of the birthplace of the Renaissance and the legendary home of the Medici, Dante, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and other giants of the age. Her keen observations of this famously alluring city speak to Florence's persistent character and magnetism-and the attraction it exerted over the first major wave of American tourists to postwar Europe. These essays, which originally app...

Captivating portraits of two of the world's most beguiling cities from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Group.Mary McCarthy blends art, politics, religion, music, and history to create unique living portraits of two of Italy's most enchanting cities in these enthralling books now available in one volume.The Stones of Florence: The book Library Journal called "Mary McCarthy's classic" takes readers on a timeless...

A journey through the glorious Italian city's scenery, history, and culture, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Venice Observed and The Group.Mary McCarthy's classic celebrates the Italian city often looked upon as the provincial sister to the better-dressed, more "feminine" Venice.To McCarthy, Florence, or Firenze, is a place of ageless enchantment, from the Duomo to the fortressed palaces. The Renaissance began...

In this no-holds-barred memoir with a foreword by Elizabeth Hardwick, the bestselling author of The Group recalls her early life in New York, revealing the genesis of and genius behind her groundbreaking fictionMary McCarthy is a married twenty-four-year-old Communist and critic when this memoir begins. She's disciplined, dedicated, and sexually experimental: At one point she realizes that in twenty-four hours she "had slept with three different men." But s...

An "endlessly fascinating novel" of an American student finding his way in 1960s Paris from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group ( San Francisco Chronicle).It is 1964, and Peter Levi, a young student and bird watcher, has come to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Shy and innocent at nineteen years old, he arrives fresh from an extended Maine holiday with his vivacious mother, and is determined to live a life free of unwante...