Today it's called In Search of Lost Time, though an earlier generation knew it as Remembrance of Things Past. Under whatever title, and whichever translator, Proust's gargantuan novel has challenged English-speaking readers for nearly a century.Over the course of twelve months, Stephen Fall tackled the recent and lovely Penguin/Viking editions, blogging on the internet as he read. He devotes a short chapter to each of the novel's seven books, introducing it with a...

The classic memoir about raising a special-needs daughter in an era of misinformation and prejudice from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author.It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly that all people are equal in their humanity and that all have the same human rights.Pearl S. Buck is known today for earning a Nobel Prize in Literature and for such New York Times–bestselling novels as The Good Earth. What many do not know...

A New York Times Notable Book: A revealing look at the famous twentieth-century children's author who brought us The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.Few writers have had the enduring cultural influence of Roald Dahl, who inspired generations of loyal readers. Acclaimed biographer Jeremy Treglown cuts no corners in humanizing this longstanding immortal of juvenile fiction.Roald Dahl explores this master of children's liter...

Winner of the Overseas Press Club Cornelius Ryan AwardJohn Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from its early days, through the bloody battle of Hue in 1968, to the Cambodian invasion. He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over.In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, ...

Joe Mackall has lived surrounded by the Swartzentruber Amish community of Ashland County, Ohio, for over sixteen years. They are the most traditional and insular of all the Amish sects: the Swartzentrubers live without gas, electricity, or indoor plumbing; without lights on their buggies or cushioned chairs in their homes; and without rumspringa, the recently popularized "running-around time" that some Amish sects allow their sixteen-year-olds.Over the years, Mackall has developed ...

2017 long-list finalist, Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour WritingIn Hard Knox, seasoned columnist and consummate everyman Jack Knox offers up his uniquely hilarious views on Canadian life as seen from the western fringes of the country—in particular from the “Island of Misfit Toys” as he aptly calls his Vancouver Island home. This treasure trove of west-coast wit and wisdom touches on everything from “smug anti-Americanism” to extreme weather to flagrant p...

A fascinating memoir by a free-spirited New Yorker writer, whose wanderlust led her from the Belgian Congo to Shanghai and beyond.Originally published in 1970, under the title Times and Places, this book is a collection of twenty-three of her articles from the New Yorker, published between 1937 and 1970. Well reviewed upon first publication, the book was re-published under the current title in 2000 with a foreword by Sheila McGrath, a long...

Please Enjoy Your Happiness is a beautifully written coming-of-age memoir based on the English author's summer-long love affair with a remarkable older Japanese woman. Whilst serving as a seaman at the age of nineteen, Paul Brinkley-Rogers met Kaji Yukiko, a sophisticated, highly intellectual Japanese woman, who was on the run from her vicious gangster boyfriend, a member of Japan's brutal crime syndicate the yakuza.Trying to create a perfect experience of purity, she took...

A hard-hitting look at the regulation of sexual difference and its role in circumscribing African American cultureThe sociology of race relations in America typically describes an intersection of poverty, race, and economic discrimination. But what is missing from the picture—sexual difference—can be as instructive as what is present. In this ambitious work, Roderick A. Ferguson reveals how the discourses of sexuality are used to articulate theories of racial diffe...

A family's sweet legacy melts into a bitter tale of secrets, betrayal, and madness in Washington, D.C.'s iconic ice cream empire.For over 70 years, Gifford's Ice Cream and Candy Company was a beloved institution. But behind the happy facade lay a dark truth: elaborate schemes, a crushing bankruptcy, millions missing, and a tragic suicide. Andrew Gifford, the last heir, unearths the byzantine betrayals that destroyed his family's legendary business.From its ...

“True, time is the villain and we are trapped in him. True, love is sometimes not returned. True, friends are sometimes false. But to be aware of this—all of it—and still want to go on living, that is the triumph. It is the reward.”As a young woman and aspiring author, Gail Godwin kept a detailed journal of her hopes and dreams, her love affairs, daily struggles, and small triumphs as she yearned for the day when she would finally become a published writer. At the ...

**"One of the country's most distinguished intellectuals [and] one of its most provocative."-The New York TimesLook out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.**Bookish and retiring, Garry Wills has been an outsider in the academy, in journalism, even in his church. Yet these qualities have, paradoxically, prompted people to share intimate insights with him- perhaps because he is not a rival, a competitor, or a thre...