"Delightfully original, brilliantly conceived, witty, and poignant.” —Brenda WineappleBerlin is more than a city; it's a survivor, an enigma, and a mirror to the world, a unique place whose recent past holds essential lessons for us today.IIn 1929, Berlin stood at a precipice—alive with art, literature, and radical politics, yet trembling under the weight of economic instability and the shadows of extremism. A century later, the city bears ...

A New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year: A look at the pleasures and surprises of rereading.Compared with reading, the act of rereading is far more personal—it involves a complex interaction of our past selves, our present selves, and literature. With candor and humor, this “inspired intellectual romp, part memoir, part criticism” takes us on a guided tour of the author’s own return to books she once knew—from the plays of Shake...

Fifteen outstanding writers answered editor Wendy Lesser’s call for original essays on the subject of language–the one they grew up with, and the English in which they write.Despite American assumptions about polite Chinese discourse, Amy Tan believes that there was nothing discreet about the Chinese language with which she grew up. Leonard Michaels spoke only Yiddish until he was five, and still found its traces in his English language writing. Belgian-born Luc Sante loved his French Tint...

Room for Doubt is Wendy Lesser’s account of three separate but interlocking occasions for doubt: her stay in Berlin, a city she had never expected to visit; her unwritten book on the philosopher David Hume; and her long friendship with the writer Leonard Michaels, which constantly broke down and yet endured. Through this unusual journey, Lesser in the end shows us how, once examined, things are never quite what she thought they were.

In this unusual memoir of the life of the mind, the founding editor of The Threepenny Review reflects upon the choices she has made in pursuit of her vocation as a self-described "eighteenth-century man of letters." Wendy Lesser, one of our shrewdest cultural observers, describes how her education, her experiences, and the works of her favorite writers, artists, and performers have shaped and deepened her understanding of the world. She shows us how she has created an inde...

"Even those unmoved by its subject will thrill to [ Scandinavian Noir], a beautifully crafted inquiry into fiction, reality, crime and place . . . Perhaps when it comes to fiction and reality, what we need most are critics like Lesser, who can dissect the former with the tools of the latter." --Kate Tuttle, The New York Times Book ReviewAn in-depth and personal exploration of Scandinavian crime fiction as a way into Scandinavian culture at...

Born in Estonia 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia. By the time of his mysterious death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last fifteen years of his life.Wendy Lesser's You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn is a major exploration of the architect's life and work. Kahn, per...

A lively and inspired biography celebrating the centennial of this master choreographer, dancer, and stage directorJerome Robbins (1918–1998) was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz and grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, where his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents owned the Comfort Corset Company. Robbins, who was drawn to dance at a young age, resisted the idea of joining the family business. In 1936 he began working with Gluck Sandor, wh...

"A delectably sophisticated inquiry into why reading is a constant source of pleasure and provocation." — Booklist"Reading Why I Read delivers all the pleasure of discussing one's favorite books with a marvelously articulate, intelligent, opinionated friend. It's like joining the book club of your dreams." —Francine Prose"Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most ...

Table Talk is a portable dinner party and a book to read alone while laughing out loud. Table Talk is a salon attended by your smartest friends and by all of the wittiest people they know. Table Talk is a collection of brief but critically acclaimed, half serious/half tongue–in–cheek pieces that borrow the format of The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" column. Selected from several decades of The Threepenny Review, known colloquially as the West Coast's New York Review...

"Delightfully original, brilliantly conceived, witty, and poignant.” —Brenda WineappleBerlin is more than a city; it's a survivor, an enigma, and a mirror to the world, a unique place whose recent past holds essential lessons for us today.IIn 1929, Berlin stood at a precipice—alive with art, literature, and radical politics, yet trembling under the weight of economic instability and the shadows of extremism. A century later, the city bears ...