A scary, funny novel—a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination.It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense.Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad—and is poised to make a fortune on Big If, a ...

David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture.Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop."The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance...

David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture.Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop."The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance...

**Brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction writings by "one of America's most daring and talented writers." (Los Angeles Times Book Review).Both Flesh and Not gathers fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time.Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm t...

In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness -- a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his.These are worlds undreamt of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown (The Soul Is Not a Smithy). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious as...

Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year.“This was the most anomalous year (so far) in human history,” guest editor Bill McKibben writes, “the year in which the relationship between people and planet showed its most dramatic signs yet of unraveling.” The selections in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 revea...

**Learn how to fight against the disinformation campaigns imperiling American democracy in this empowering, pocket-sized guide from the author of How to Talk to a Science Denier.INSIDE THE WAR ON TRUTH: Explore the history of how disinformation has been weaponized to manipulate society.**The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of 70 years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee M...

Experience a sci-fi master at his finest in this collection of 12 science fiction short stories from 1956 to 1993—many now presented in English for the very first time!“A brilliant introduction to Lem’s science fiction.” —Wall Street JournalDiscover the full range of Stanislaw Lem’s intense curiosity about scientific ideas—and his sardonic approach to human nature—in this unforgettable collection of 12 short stories.In “The...

In this rare peak into the personal life of the author of numerous bestselling novels, gain an understanding of David Foster Wallace and how he became the man that he was.Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in This is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult lif...

This selection of essays on writing and reading showcases the acclaimed author's "wise and brilliant . . . precise and playful" command of language ( The New York Times).Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her "a magician of self-consciousness," while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, "Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive."

History that doesn't suck: Smart, crude, and hilariously relevant to modern life.Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Too bad it's usually boring as sh*t. Enter The Captain, the ultimate storyteller who brings history to life (and to your life) in this hilarious, intelligent, brutally honest, and crude compendium to events that happened before any of us were born.The entries in this compulsively readable book bridge past and present with to...

"Superb . . . the best one-volume economic history of the United States in a long time and, perhaps, ever." — NewsweekIn this illuminating history, John Steele Gordon tells the extraordinary story of the world's first economic superpower. He shows how the American economy became not only the world's largest, but also its most dynamic and innovative. Combining its English political inheritance with its diverse, ambitious population, the nation was able to de...