Straight To Hell examines ten case histories of suicide in the 20th century. These acts of self-annihilation, committed by artists, writers, and philosophers, stand as the final testaments of individuals whose vision would ultimately drive them to oblivion. Contributors including cultural historian Stephen Barber, journalist Jack Sargeant and film-maker Peter Whitehead look back in detail on the enigmatic, often bizarre suicides of: Yukio Mishima, Mark Rothko, Harry Crosby, Guy Debord, Pier...

A compendium of 101 book recommendations from Booker Prize–winning author Yann Martel (Life of Pi) to Prime Minister Stephen Harper—each with an accompanying letter, together probing the question: what sort of mind, nourished by what, do we want our leaders to have?Politely and unfailingly, every two weeks for almost four years, Yann Martel sent Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper a book and accompanying letter. He completed the project in 2011 with 101...

Fearless, iconic poet, novelist, and feminist Erica Jong offers a fascinating in-depth appreciation of the controversial life and work of American literary giant Henry MillerHenry Miller ( Tropic of Cancer) and Erica Jong ( Fear of Flying) are true literary soul mates. Both authors have been, in equal measure, lauded for their creative genius and maligned for their frank treatment of human sexuality. So who better than Erica Jong to offer an expert...

Completely revised and updated to include the most up-to-date selections, this is a bold and bright reference book to the novels and the writers that have excited the world's imagination. This authoritative selection of novels, reviewed by an international team of writers, critics, academics, and journalists, provides a new take on world classics and a reliable guide to what's hot in contemporary fiction. Featuring more than 700 illustrations and photographs, presenting quotes from individ...

“Writing is spooky,” according to Norman Mailer. “There is no routine of an office to keep you going, only the blank page each morning, and you never know where your words are coming from, those divine words.” In The Spooky Art, Mailer discusses with signature candor the rewards and trials of the writing life, and recommends the tools to navigate it. Addressing the reader in a conversational tone, he draws on the best of more than fifty years of his own criticism, advice, and deta...

Curiously practical—this no-nonsense blend of literary biography and self-help unravels how interesting life can be if only you could resist the impulse to rush through the mundane rituals of modern life. Every morning, Marcel Proust sipped his two cups of strong coffee with milk, ate a croissant from one boulangerie, dunking it in his coffee as he slowly read the day’s paper with great care—poring over each headline and section.Only Alain de Botton could have pulled so many useful...

'Damn, all my cheating secrets revealed. In book form' Stephen FryWhich philosopher had the maddest hairstyle? Which novelist drank 50 cups of black coffee every day? What on earth did Simone de Beauvoir see in Jean-Paul Sartre?How to Sound Cultured offers a wry and yet profoundly useful look inside the mirrored palaces of high culture. Covering such inscrutable characters as Heidegger, Montaigne, Kahlo and Lévi-Strauss (apparently not just a designer of jean...

We all have a story to tell - whether it is a story of a migrant childhood, a difficult past, adopting a child, riding a bike across India, or simply a contemplative year in a garden. With these stories we make sense of ourselves and the world around us.Memoir - writing about an aspect of a life rather than a whole life - expresses and shapes these stories within us so that the writing becomes more than a record, it becomes a creative journey.Drawing on Patti's extensive te...

An informative, fun and rather charming essay on the nature and history of one of life’s most desirable assets, Charm, by renowned culture and design critic, Stephen Bayley.Aiming to wound, a schoolmaster wrote on future design-guru Stephen Bayley’s last ever school report “Charm alone will not get him through”. Bayley took this to mean that an affable, genial, outgoing nature was not enough to ensure survival in a harsh world of statistical performance. But survive and flourish is...

An alternative autobiography of the well-loved actor and man of the theatre, winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography.In My Life in Pieces Simon Callow retraces his life through the multifarious performers, writers, productions and events which have left their indelible mark on him.The story begins with Peter Pan – his first ever visit to the theatre – before transporting us to southern Africa and South London, where Callow spent much of h...

Sinister Resonance begins with the premise that sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location is ambiguous and whose existence is transitory. The intangibility of sound is uncanny – a phenomenal presence in the head, at its point of source and all around. The close listener is like a medium who draws out substance from that which is not entirely there.The history of listening must be constructed from the narratives of myth and fiction, 'silent' arts such as painting, the ...

"Exhilarating, adventurous, original . . . The Shelf is a reminder of what reading and writing are all about." —Azar Nafisi,#1 New York Times– bestselling author of Reading Lolita in TehranAfter a career of reading from syllabuses and writing about canonical books, Phyllis Rose decided to read like an explorer. Casting herself into the untracked wilde...