In a breathtaking blend of lyrical memoir, photographs, and textual artifacts, Mother of Stories examines the complex legacy of a mother who was a gifted teacher, a passionate reader, and a pathological liar.While Alice Dailey was immersed in an academic study of death in Shakespeare’s history plays, her mother died from toxic exposure to mold. Composed in a fugue of grief, Mother of Stories is Dailey’s uncompromising account of the months before and after her mot...

How to Do Things with Dead People studies human contrivances for representing and relating to the dead. Alice Dailey takes as her principal objects of inquiry Shakespeare's English history plays, describing them as reproductive mechanisms by which living replicas of dead historical figures are regenerated in the present and re-killed. Considering the plays in these terms exposes their affinity with a transhistorical array of technologies for produ...

The impetus for this Approaches to Teaching volume on The Taming of the Shrew grew from the editors' desire to discover why a play notorious for its controversial exploration of conflicts between men and women and the challenges of marriage is enduringly popular in the classroom, in the performing arts, and in scholarship. The result is a volume that offers practical advice to teachers on editions and teaching resources in part 1, "Materials," while illuminating how the play's subtle and c...

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here — with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely.This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work — essays like his famous cruise-ship piece, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," excerpts from his novels The Broom of the Sys...

A collection of the year's best essays selected by André Aciman, author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name."An essay is the child of uncertainty," André Aciman contends in his introduction to The Best American Essays 2020. "The struggle to write what one hopes is entirely true, and the long incubation every piece of writing requires of a writer who is thinking difficult thoughts, are what ultimately give the writing its depth, its ma...

Curated by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild, this volume shares intimate perspectives from some of today's most acclaimed writers.As Cheryl Strayed explains in her introduction, "the invisible, unwritten last line of every essay should be and nothing was ever the same again." The reader, in other words, should feel the ground shift, if even only a bit. In this edition of the acclaimed anthology series, Strayed has gathered ...

From the apparently simple adaptation of a text into film, theatre or a new literary work, to the more complex appropriation of style or meaning, it is arguable that all texts are somehow connected to a network of existing texts and art forms. In this new edition Adaptation and Appropriation explores:multiple definitions and practices of adaptation and appropriationthe cultural and aesthetic politics behind the impulse to adaptthe global and local...

The acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory presents an anthology of personal essays by Hilton Als, Christopher Hitchens, Zadie Smith and others.In her selection process for this sterling volume, Edwidge Danticat considers the inherent vulnerability of the essay form—a vulnerability that seems all the more present in today's spotlighted public square. As she says in her introduction, "when we insert our 'I' (our eye) to search deeper into someone, somethi...

This is a book review. A review and analysis of the Stephen King book, Doctor Sleep.

Hamlet remains the most-studied of all Shakespeare's great tragedies. This collection of newly-commissioned essays gives readers an overview of past critical views of the play as well as new writing about the play from today's leading scholars. The range of perspectives offered makes the book an invaluable companion to anyone studying the play at an advanced level. The final chapter on learning and teaching resources is particularly useful as a guide for further study.

A hilarious collection of the best book-related humor from the humor-laden archives of McSweeney's Internet Tendency.As John Hodgman says in this book's introduction, “We all know that books are funny. First, they are made of paste and cloth, which is funny, as is the fact that people still buy and read them.” Open McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes and be regaled by such sketches, lists, letters, and spoofs as:Postcards from James Joyce ...

"Witty, shrewd, and imaginative essays on interdisciplinary topics . . . from Shakespeare to psychoanalysis, and the practice of higher education today." — Publishers WeeklyAs a break from their ordained labors, what might the Muses do on their lunch hour today? This collection of essays uses these figures of ancient legend to explore such modern-day topics as the curious return of myth and ritual in the theories of evolutionary psychologists and much more...