W: 7744 books

"Smart, knowing, and deeply reported, the definitive history of one of modern American humor’s wellsprings." —Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland, host of NPR’s Studio 360 Labor Day, 1969. Two recent college graduates move to New York to edit a new magazine called The National...

The life and times of one of our most enchanting artists; a twentieth-century fairy tale, lovingly remembered and luminously told. Fourteen years ago, the artist Dorothea Tanning published Birthday, a collection of reminiscences. Now she has expanded it into a memoir of her journey through...

Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage. We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still...

A collection of poignant essays about the transformative power of knitting by twenty-seven extraordinary writers. “The impressive collection of writers here have contributed essays that celebrate knitting and knitters. They share their knitting triumphs and disasters as well as their life...

The Birth of an Opera offers illuminating insight into how operas are written and the personalities, incidents, and musical circumstances that have shaped their composition. Through a deft compilation of primary sources—letters, memoirs, and personal accounts from composers, librettists,...

"Elegantly written, psychologically and historically astute."—Los Angeles Times Book Review From scholar to buccaneer, from outcast to establishment figure, John Donne emerged as one of the greatest English poets. Following Donne from Plague-ridden streets to palaces, from taverns...

"[A] lively and beautifully engineered biography." — John Banville, New York Review of Books Donald Maclean was one of the most treacherous spies of the Cold War era, a member of the infamous “Cambridge Five” spy ring, yet the extent of this shrewd, secretive man’s betrayal...

In highly charged, dazzling language, 4:30 Movie explores a sister’s death and the ways movies shape our imaginations. In poems that are by turns intimate and wild, provocative and tender, award-winning poet Donna Masini explores personal loss, global violence, and the consolations of art....

The surprising hidden history behind Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Why did Charlotte Brontë go to such great lengths on the publication of her acclaimed, best-selling novel, Jane Eyre, to conceal its authorship from her family, close friends, and the press? In The Secret History of Jane...

A brilliant exposé of the interaction between art, design, and commerce. In The Language of Things, the director of London's Design Museum charts our relationship with all things designed. With scintillating wit and an eye for the pleasures and dangers of rampant consumerism, Deyan Sudjic...

"A deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel."—Liz Rosenberg Boston Globe Informed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother...

"Gaines has a deft understanding of the Washington-Lafayette relationship ... [and] a knack for wielding substantial research with aplomb."—San Francisco Chronicle This book tells the story of the French and American Revolutions in a single, thrilling narrative that shows just how...

"A striking success…the account of the White House years is absorbing, the account of Mary Lincoln's life as a widow utterly compelling." —New York Times This definitive biography of Mary Todd Lincoln beautifully conveys her tumultuous life and times. A privileged daughter of...

"Trust Rich, a clarion poet of conscience, to get the fractured timbre of the times just right."--Booklist, starred review In this new collection Adrienne Rich confronts dislocations and upheavals in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The title poem, in...