Essays on small art films and big-budget blockbusters, including Antonia's Line, American Beauty, Schindler's List, and The Passion of the Christ, that view films as life lessons, enlarging our sense of human possibilities.For Alan Stone, a one-time Freudian analyst and former president of the American Psychiatric Society, movies are the great modern, democratic medium for exploring our individual and collective lives. They provi...

The writers who crafted the innovative ideas, characters and worlds that changed our perception of reality and shaped our future are revealed in probing, wide-ranging and provocative interviews that first appeared in Playboy magazine. From the masters of the stage like Henry Miller and Tennessee Williams to the controversial revolutionaries of the word Vladimir Nabokov and Allen Ginsberg to the kings of science fiction and horror Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury and Chuck Palahniuk, these liter...

A master film critic is at her witty, exhilarating, and opinionated best in this career-spanning collection featuring pieces on Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, and other modern movie classics“Film criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply,” Pauline Kael once observed, “just because you must use everything you are and everything you know.” Between 1968 and 1991, as regular film reviewer for The New Yorker, Kael used ...

**Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic Michiko Kakutani shares 100 personal, thought-provoking essays about books that have mattered to her and that help illuminate the world we live in today—with beautiful illustrations throughout.“A book tailormade for bibliophiles.”—Oprah Winfrey“An ebullient celebration of books and reading.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)**In the introduction to her new collection of essays, Ex Libris: 100+ Books to ...

Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Burn This Book is a powerful collection of essays that explore the meaning of censorship and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves.As Americans we often take our freedom of speech for granted. When we talk about censorship we talk about China, the former Soviet Union, or the Middle East. But recent political developments—including the passage of the Patriot Act—have ...

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...

Discover the revelatory and illuminating interviews with literary luminaries that have graced the pages of The Paris Review for over half a century.This critically acclaimed series continues with another eclectic lineup, featuring intimate conversations with renowned authors such as Philip Roth, Ezra Pound, Haruki Murakami, Marilynne Robinson, Stephen Sondheim, E. B. White, Maya Angelou, and William Styron. In these remarkable extended interviews, the authors delve...

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...

Are you tired of bland, overly earnest reading guides that discuss the same old books? Read This Next by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittlemark is the answer. A smart, irreverent, honest, and truly hilarious guide to your 500 new favorite books, Read This Next is aimed at those readers and book groups that are looking for great reading suggestions with more variety and spice than the usual book club picks—while offering food for thought and laughter in equal measure.Ready to discover ...

Here is a kaleidoscopic analysis of Jewish humor as seen through Funnyman, a little-known super-heroic invention by the creators of Superman. Included are complete comic-book stories and daily and Sunday newspaper panels from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creative fiasco.Siegel and Shuster, two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland, sold the rights to their amazing and astonishingly lucrative comic book superhero to Detective Comics for $130 in 1938. Not only did they ...

An updated edition – with completely new chapters – of the most accessible and compelling history of the cinema yet published, and complements Mark Cousins' fascinating 15-hour film documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey.Filmmaker and author Mark Cousins shows how filmmakers are influenced both by the historical events of their times, and by each other. He demonstrates, for example, how Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s influenced Rainer ...

This "standard text of the defining era of gay literati" tells the cultural history of the interconnected lives of the 20th century's most influential gay writers ( Philadelphia Inquirer).In the years following World War II a group of gay writers established themselves as major cultural figures in American life. Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation's imagination. Gore Vidal, the wry, withering c...