“Make [your] characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le CarréNothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if yo...

Discover a little-known chapter in Holocaust literature with this “riveting tale” of the 17-year-old Jew who was the first to take up arms against the Nazi regime (Wall Street Journal).“Reads like a thriller.” —New York Journal of BooksAfter learning about Nazi persecution of his family, Herschel Grynszpan (pronounced Greenspan) bought a small handgun and on November 7, 1938, went to the German embassy and shot the first G...

Though you may not know the man, you probably know his music. Arkansas-born Louis Jordan's songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Caldonia" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" can still be heard today, decades since Jordan ruled the charts. In his five-decade career, Jordan influenced American popular music, film and more and inspired the likes of James Brown, B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. Known as the "King of the Jukeboxes," he and his combo played a hybrid of jazz, swing, ...

From Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program, comes essential and practical advice drawn from The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop.With nearly thirty years of teaching experience, Stephen Koch has earned a reputation as an astute and benevolent mentor; and with Advice to the Writer, his lucid observations and commonsense techniques have never been more accessible. Here Koch dispenses sound guidance for...

Talk is a hilariously irreverent and racy testament to dialogue: the gossip, questioning, analysis, arguments, and revelations that make up our closest friendships. It’s the summer of 1965 and Emily, Vincent, and Marsha are at the beach. All three are ambitious and artistic; all are hovering around thirty; and all are deeply and mercilessly invested in analyzing themselves and everyone around them. The friends discuss sex, shrinks, psychedelics, sculpture, and S and M in an ongoin...

The definitive critical study of twentieth-century pop culture icon Andy Warhol, the man who redrew the boundaries of art.Andy Warhol's work and personality changed American visual culture forever, making him an international superstar. In this must-read volume, heralded as "exemplary" by Artforum and "resoundingly brilliant" by Film Comment, Stephen Koch provides unprecedented detail on Warhol's life and work—his rise to global fame, his entangle...

After learning about Nazi persecution of his family, Herschel Grynszpan (pronounced "Greenspan"), an impoverished seventeen-year-old Jew living in Paris, bought a small handgun and on November 7, 1938, went to the German embassy and shot the first German diplomat he saw. When the man died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels made the shooting their pretext for the great state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic terror known as Kristallnacht, still seen by many as an initiating event of ...

Built in 1927, the German ocean liner Cap Arcona was the greatest ship since the Titanic. When the Nazis seized control, she was stripped down for use as a floating barracks and troop transport. Hitler's minister, Joseph Goebbels, later cast her as a "star" in the epic propaganda film about the sinking of the legendary Titanic. In the Third Reich's final desperate days, when SS Cap Arcona was mistakenly bombed by the British Air Force, concentration camp...

From the survivor of ten Nazi concentration camps who went on to create the New England Holocaust Memorial, a "devastating...inspirational" memoir (The Today Show) about finding strength in the face of despair.On August 14, 2017, two days after a white-supremacist activist rammed his car into a group of anti-Fascist protestors, killing one and injuring nineteen, the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized for the second time in as many months. At the...

A fresh and insightful history of how the German arts-and-letters scene was transformed under the Nazis.Culture was integral to the smooth running of the Third Reich. In the years preceding WWII, a wide variety of artistic forms were used to instill a Nazi ideology in the German people and to manipulate the public perception of Hitler's enemies. During the war, the arts were closely tied to the propaganda machine that promoted the cause of Germany's military campai...

Some women capture our attention like no others. Faith Bacon and Sally Rand were beautiful blondes from humble backgrounds who shot to fame behind a pair of oversize ostrich fans, but with very different outcomes. Sally Rand would go on to perform for the millions who attended the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, becoming America's sweetheart. Faith Bacon, the Marilyn Monroe of her time—once anointed the "world's most beautiful woman"—would experience the dark side of fame and slip into drug ...

When Pepper Stetler was told that her daughter who has Down Syndrome would be regularly required to take IQ tests to secure support in school, she asked a simple question: why? In questioning the authority and relevance of the test, Stetler sets herself on a winding investigation into how the IQ test came to be the irrefutable standard for measuring intelligence. The unsettling history causes Stetler to wonder what influence this test will have over her daughter's future and whether Louisa...