A must-have for the fans of the #1 bestselling author of Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris, a collection of his favorite short fiction from Flannery O'Connor to Tobias Wolff.David Sedaris is an exceptional reader. Alone in his apartment, he reads stories aloud to the point he has them memorized. Sometimes he fantasizes that he wrote them. Sometimes, when they’re his very favorite stories, he’ll fantasize about reading them in front of an audience and t...

For many Americans, Brazil is a land of contradictions: vast natural resources and entrenched corruption; extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty; beautiful beaches and violence-torn favelas. Brazil occupies a vivid place in the American imagination, and yet it remains largely unknown.In an extraordinary journey that spans five hundred years, from European colonization to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling's Brazil offers a rich, dramatic...

**This “funny, biting, thoughtful, and wholly original” Vietnam War memoir captures the fear, sorrow, and absurdities of combat (Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried).“A must-read war memoir . . . related by one of the most incisive observers of the American political scene." —Kirkus Reviews**A conversation with a group of today’s military age men and women about America’s involvement in Vietnam inspired Jeff Danziger to write about his own warti...

Now a major motion picture! New York Times bestselling author and “one of America’s top cultural critics” (EntertainmentWeekly****) Chuck Klosterman’s darkly comic debut novel brilliantly captures the charm and dread of small-town life in rural North Dakota.**Somewhere in rural North Dakota, there is a fictional town called Owl. They don’t have cable. They don’t really have pop c...

Featuring acclaimed humorist David Sedaris's unique blend of hilarity and heart, this illustrated collection of animal-themed tales is an utter delight.Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of everyday life. In "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," three strangers commiserate about animal bureaucracy while waiting in a complaint line. In "Hello Kitty," a cynical feline struggles to sit th...

THE ONLY TRUE STORY BEHIND THE CREATOR OF MARY POPPINSThe remarkable life of P.L. Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins—perfect for fans of the movie Mary Poppins Returns and the original Disney classic!“An arresting life…Lawson is superb at excavating the details.” —Library JournalThe spellbinding stories of Mary Poppins, the quintessentially English and utterly magical nanny, have been loved by ge...

This intimate, revealing portrait of Frank Sinatra—from the man closest to the famous singer during the last decade of his life—features never-before-seen photos and new revelations about celebrities like Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, Madonna, and Bono. “If you are a Frank fan, buy this book” (Jimmy Kimmel).More than a hundred books have been written about the legendary crooner. Every detail of his life fascinates—from his music and acting career to...

In these wonderfully funny and poignant stories, Willett’s eccentric, complex characters think and do the unconventional. Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible.Critically acclaimed when it ...

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic ob...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.There is perhaps no more compelling example of the power of words than Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." In merely 272 words, Lincoln gave the nation "a new birth of freedom" by tracing its history to the Declaration of Independence, as well as incorporating elements of the Greek revival and Transcendentalism. Lincoln's entire life and deep political experience went into the creation of his revolutionary mas...

Welcome to the hilarious, strange, elegiac, outrageous world of David Sedaris!In Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview-a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable.A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertake...

The moving memoir of a scientist coming of age as an immigrant in America who finds her calling at the forefront of the AI revolution.Wired called Dr. Fei-Fei Li “one of a tiny group of scientists—a group perhaps small enough to fit around a kitchen table—who are responsible for AI’s recent remarkable advances.”Known to the world as the creator of ImageNet, a key catalyst of modern artificial intelligence, Dr. Li has spent more than two decades at ...