W W Norton Company imprint: 2439 books

Masterful essays that illuminate not only how we die but also how we live. Thomas Lynch, poet, funeral director, and author of the highly praised The Undertaking, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the National Book Award, continues to examine the relations between the "literary...

"Even more valuable than its widely praised predecessor, The Culture of Narcissism." —John W. Aldridge Faced with an escalating arms race, rising crime and terrorism, environmental deterioration, and long-term economic decline, people have retreated from commitments that presuppose...

"In the same way Salinger carved out the niche of male adolescence ....Beller approaches that mutable boy-to-man territory."—San Francisco Chronicle Writing with the sparkling wit and insight of his highly praised debut, Seduction Theory ("Brilliantly captures the great expectations...

A sweeping look at the lives and work of two important English Romantic painters, from a Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning author. Renowned poet Stanley Plumly, who has been praised for his “obsessive, intricate, intimate and brilliant” (Washington Post) nonfiction, explores immortality...

A lucid deconstruction of the politics and public figures shaping the social, financial, and military disasters of our times. This selection of Michael Kinsley's trenchant editorial writing in Slate (and elsewhere) since 1995 covers the end of the Clinton era (Monica, impeachment, etc.) and...

"Passionate, cantankerous, and fascinating. Rather like Korea itself."--Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times Book Review Korea has endured a "fractured, shattered twentieth century," and this updated edition brings Bruce Cumings's leading history of the modern era into the...

“Will shape our thinking about America and the Middle East for years.”—Christopher Dickey, Newsweek This best-selling history is the first fully comprehensive history of America’s involvement in the Middle East from George Washington to George W. Bush. As Niall Ferguson writes, “If...

Nearly three thousand people died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In Lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomoc, the United States suffered the single largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its soil. In November 2002 the United States...

A radical new explanation of how life and consciousness emerge from physics and chemistry. As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The "Theory...

Named after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, red-haired Sarah Nour El-Din is "wonderful, irresistibly unique, funny, and amazing," raves Amy Tan. Determined to make of her life a work of art, she tries to tell her story, sometimes casting it as a memoir, sometimes a novel, always...

This reissue of Adrienne Rich’s first poetry collection reaffirms the author’s place as one of our most important American poets. A Change of World was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Out of print for decades, this initial collection launched the career...

"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative...

"Takes an historically important decision, places it in its immediate stream of policy development, perceptions and events and adds what was missing from the Pentagon Papers."—Richard E. Neustadt, Harvard University "A thoroughly researched and highly perceptive study of the...

"Historical reflections that deftly challenge the political and ideological foundations of President Bush's foreign policy."--Charles A. Kupchan, New York Times In a book that brings a magisterial command of history to the most urgent of contemporary questions, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning...