An “extraordinary first novel” about a father trying to escape the past and a son lost in a world of imaginary voices—winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize (Booklist).Levi Revel is a boy in danger of losing his family and maybe his mind. He’s in awe of his father, Everest—a majestic dreamer, a master builder, a man with a violent, secret past. As the family moves from state to state, Levi hears solace in the voice of God, a voice that sends hi...

These collected and revised essays from Larry Woiwode reflect on the words and places—cultural, spiritual, and literary—that shape us in the image of the incarnate God.

“Mette Iversdatter’s window was a porthole on the winter sky.”  With this spare, vivid image, Larry Woiwode brings us into the simple and anxious rhythms of life for a Norwegian farm girl in the first decade of the twentieth century. Christmas Eve falls in the midst of deprivation as Mette’s family prepares to journey to her grandparents’ farm for Christmas. When her father fails to bag a big deer on the journey, they arrive, like everyone else, almost empty-handed. Yet despite frustration...

An “extraordinary first novel” about a father trying to escape the past and a son lost in a world of imaginary voices—winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize (Booklist).Levi Revel is a boy in danger of losing his family and maybe his mind. He’s in awe of his father, Everest—a majestic dreamer, a master builder, a man with a violent, secret past. As the family moves from state to state, Levi hears solace in the voice of God, a voice that sends hi...

Words—so small, so powerful—engender and enable our very existence. How are we to receive them, use them, hear them, and unite them?Critically acclaimed author Larry Woiwode explores the mysterious potential of words in this collection of 21 essays on the process and the significance of reading and writing.Reflect on Woiwode’s masterful meditations and you will find yourself inspired not only to write and to read, but also to believe in the transforming power of words.

From hard scrabble origins on the Plains of North Dakota, to longshoremen organizing on Manhattan’s West Side docks, to living the life of a Bohemian poet in Los Angeles and beyond, Thomas McGrath’s literary aspirations took him far from his humble beginnings.For over six decades, McGrath created poems based largely on the themes of love, work, and political justice. His love of the prairie and his early years on a working farm were central to his life. The virtues of the agrarian communit...

From the author of the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes a highly entertaining and informative book on the twenty-five works of literature that have most shaped the American character.Thomas C. Foster applies his much-loved combination of wit, know-how, and analysis to explain how each work has shaped our very existence as readers, students, teachers, and Americans. He illuminates how books such as The La...

"This is criticism at its best." —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles TimesWriting in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and violence in art. From Sylvia Plath’s poetry to Francis Bacon’s paintings, from the Saw franchise to Yoko Ono’s performance art, Nelson’s nuanced exploration across the artistic landscape ultimatel...

In a series of feisty and ultimately hopeful essays, one of America's sharpest social critics casts a shrewd eye over contemporary culture to reveal the worst -- and the best -- of our habits of discourse, tendencies in education, and obsessions with technological novelty. Readers will find themselves rethinking many of their bedrock assumptions: Should education transmit culture or defend us against it? Is technological innovation progress or a peculiarly American addiction? When everyone...

“A serious and engaging cultural history painted on an admirably large canvas.”—Laura Kipnis, New York Times Book ReviewWhat do John Calvin, Sarah Palin, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, and Bon Iver have in common? A preoccupation with sincerity. With deep historical perspective and a brilliant contemporary spin, R. Jay Magill Jr. tells the beguiling tale of sincerity’s theological past, its current emotional resonance, and the deep impact it has had on the Western ...

The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than everFew could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself inclu...

A New York Review Books OriginalAn uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, eminent, prizewinning works of art that are said to be good and good for you and are not. He dubbed this phenomenon “Midcult” and he attacked it not only...