This is the author speaking. I haven't the slightest idea what it's about that's why I wrote it.

Language is not for God, but for man to get beyond his primitive feelings…"In Frederick Mark Kramer's They Shall Not Pass: A Novel of Manhattan and Madrid, the interior ruminations of disembodied, anonymous voices twist together in slow, constant alternation, and we gradually come to know four main figures: Jacobo, an American who fought in the Spanish Civil War and then returned to New York; Esmeralda, the woman he loved in Spain, who unbeknownst to Jacobo later ...

At the funeral of his old friend Jeff, who has committed suicide, Simeon, a poet in New York City, reencounters his old lover Liliana, who had also been Jeff's girlfriend and whom he has not seen for thirty years. Over drinks at the bar of the nearby Café Purgatorio, a long conversation ensues, trying to make sense of their three youths and what followed from them, again and again twisting together and pulling apart the circular trail of their steps and missteps. The more obsessively these...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIMENAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MORE THAN 45 PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The New Yorker • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • The Atlantic • Ne...

The New Yorker is, of course, a bastion of superb essays, influential investigative journalism, and insightful arts criticism. But for eighty years, it’s also been a hoot. In fact, when Harold Ross founded the legendary magazine in 1925, he called it “a comic weekly,” and while it has grown into much more**,** it has also remained true to its original mission. Now an uproarious sampling of its funny writings can be found in a hilarious new collection, one as satirical and witty, m...

Erica Jong made waves with both her lauded and lambasted novel Fear of Flying and her first memoir Seducing the Demon. Now one of her finest works of nonfiction—a New York Times bestseller—is back in print with a new Afterword.In Fear of Fifty, Erica Jong looks to the second half of her life and “goes right to the jugular of the women who lived wildly and vicariously through Fear of Flying” (Publishers Weekly), ...

A dazzling anthology of essays by some of the best writers of the past quarter century—from Barry Lopez and Margo Jefferson to David Sedaris and Samantha Irby—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate.The first decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a blossoming of creative nonfiction. In this extraordinary collection, Phillip Lopate gathers essays by forty-seven of America’s best contemporary writers, mingling long-established eminences with newer ...

“The richness of Pogrebin’s stories, the complexity and beauty of her storytelling, and her devastatingly honest soul-baring make Shanda a powerfully stunning piece of life and art.”—Mayim Bialik, actor, author, neuroscientist, and co-host of JeopardyThe word “shanda” is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense 20th-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and...

In 1989, punk-rock girl "Golden" Dawn has crafted an outsider's life combining the philosophies of Communism and Aleister Crowley's black magic. One fateful day she finds the dead body of her mentor in both politics and magick shot in the head, seemingly a suicide. But Dawn knows there's more going on than the cops could ever hope to find. In setting out to find the murderer herself, she will encounter dark and twisted truths for which nothing could have prepared her.

A profoundly funny—and comically profound—story collection from one of the most original voices in contemporary American fictionWhen his dying psychiatrist gives him the tapes to thirty years' worth of therapy sessions, what else can Michael Goldberg do but listen? It is the story of his life, after all—never mind the fact that it's narrated by a younger version of himself who has no idea what's going to happen next.Besides, as a man of letters best known f...

Waveform celebrates the role of women essayists in contemporary literature. Historically, women have been instrumental in moving the essay to center stage, and Waveform continues this rich tradition, further expanding the dynamic genre’s boundaries and testing its edges. With thirty essays by thirty distinguished and diverse women writers, this carefully constructed anthology incorporates works ranging from the traditional to the experimental.Waveform champions th...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The twentieth anniversary edition of the classic story of an incredible group of students and the teacher who inspired them, featuring updates on the students’ lives, new journal entries, and an introduction by Erin GruwellNow a public television documentary, Freedom Writers: Stories from the HeartIn 1994, an idealistic first-year teacher in Long Beach, California, named Erin Gruwell confronted a room...