Farrar Straus And Giroux imprint: 2581 books

Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W. H. Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first in twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, among others, their future biographer...

The first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title...

A Bold, Iconoclastic New Look at One of the Great Works of Greek Tragedy In this innovative rendition of The Oresteia, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson combines three different visions—Aischylos' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Elektra, and Euripides' Orestes—giving birth to a wholly...

Two brothers meet on the grounds of a private psychiatric facility. Drew, has been court-confined for observation and has called his older brother, Terry, to corroborate his claim of childhood sexual abuse by a young man from many summers ago. Drew's request releases barely-hidden animosities between...

The John McPhee Reader, first published in 1976, is comprised of selections from the author's first twelve books. In 1965, John McPhee published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are; a decade later, he had published eleven others. His fertility, his precision and grace as a stylist, his wit and...

A WONDROUS NEW BOOK OF MCPHEE'S PROSE PIECES—IN MANY ASPECTS HIS MOST PERSONAL IN FOUR DECADES The brief, brilliant essay "Silk Parachute," which first appeared in The New Yorker a decade ago, has become John McPhee's most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces...

In small-town America, a young adult novel about teen pregnancy is banned by the local school board, igniting a fierce and violent debate over abortion, religious beliefs, and modern feminism. Its directionless New York City author arrives in town to defend the book and finds that it has inspired...

"A writer is someone who pays attention to the world," Susan Sontag said in her 2003 acceptance speech for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and no one exemplified this definition more than she. Sontag's incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art,...

No one knows more about everything—especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling—than John Waters. The man in the pencil-thin mustache, auteur of the transgressive movie classics Pink Flamingos, Polyester, Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world’s great sophisticates,...

Selected early works from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Throughout his work, Doug Wright has often combined the personal, the social, and the political, in the process unearthing fundamental truths about life and art while casting an unblinking eye on the dark--and darkly funny--side...

Dazzling dramas on American themes from the Nobel laureate On a cold winter's day on the Dakota plains, Catherine Weldon receives a caller, Kicking Bear, bringing news of Indian rebellion. In the fort nearby, a tiny community splinters apart over how to react. In Ghost Dance, first performed...

A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory...

"When are the 1970s going to begin?" ran the joke during the Presidential campaign of 1976. With his own patented combination of serious journalism and dazzling comedy, Tom Wolfe met the question head-on in these rollicking essays in Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine -- and even provided the 1970s with its name: "The Me Decade."

In Myself with Others, Fuentes has assembled essays reflecting three of the great elements of his work: autobiography, love of literature, and politics. They include his reflections on his beginning as a writer, his celebrated Harvard University commencement address, and his trenchant examinations of Cervantes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Borges.