A close-knit family resists the rise of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy in this WW2 historical fiction classic that blends family memoir with fiction—one of the most famous European post-war novels of all time.“A glowing light of Italian literature.” —The New York Times“Life-changingly good.” —ElleAn Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, com...

An Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, comical, indispensable, comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon. Giuseppe Levi, the father, is a scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking—when he isn't provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing. Giuseppe is Jewish, married to Lidia, a Catholic, though neither is religious; they live in ...

From the internationally bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a deeply compelling story about the lives of a Cambodian family―set between 1973, just before the Cambodian Genocide by the Khmer Rouge―to 2015.The stories of one Cambodian family are intricately braided together in Alan Lightman’s haunting Three Flames, his first work of fiction in six years.Three Flames portrays the struggles of a Cambodian farming family aga...

The bestselling author of Overthrow and The Brothers brings to life the forgotten political debate that set America’s interventionist course in the world for the twentieth century and beyond.How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat—until the cycle begins again.No matter how often we debate this question, n...

A selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang, hand-selected by celebrated editor and anthologist John Freeman.IN THE PAST fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of genres have brought this unique US genre a thrilling burst of e...

Enveloped in the dark inner kingdom of her schizophrenia, sixteen-year-old Deborah is haunted by private tormentors that isolate her from the outside world. With the reluctant and fearful consent of her parents, she enters a mental hospital where she will spend the next three years battling to regain her sanity with the help of a gifted psychiatrist. As Deborah struggles to regain her sanity the listener is inexorably drawn into her private suffering.

**NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST AND THE GUARDIAN“Absorbing. . . . A revealing look at the hidden role that games have played in human development for centuries.” —Kirkus“By turns philosophical and polemical, this is a provocative and fascinating book.” —The EconomistA wide-ranging intellectual history that reveals how important games have been to human progress, and what’s at stake when we forget what games we’re ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this nostalgic and raucous collection of sixteen original essays, Ira Madison III—critic, television writer, and host of the beloved Keep It podcast—combines memoir and criticism to offer a brand-new pop-culture manifesto.“This is the most fun I’ve had reading all year. Like Chuck Klosterman before him, Ira Madison III takes seriously and analyzes the pop culture detritus that took up hours of our lives.”—Lin-Manuel Miranda...

Fifty years ago, neuroscientists thought that a mature brain was fixed like a fly in amber, unable to change. Today, we know that our brains and nervous systems change throughout our lifetimes. This concept of neuroplasticity has captured the imagination of a public eager for self-improvement -- and has inspired countless Internet entrepreneurs who peddle dubious "brain training" games and apps. In this book, Moheb Costandi offers a concise and engaging overview of neuroplasticity for the ...

Adults who want to learn a foreign language are often discouraged because they believe they cannot acquire a language as easily as children. Once they begin to learn a language, students may be further discouraged when they find the methods used to teach children don’t seem to work for them. What is an adult language learner to do?In Becoming Fluent, Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz draw on insights from psychology and cognitive science to show that adults can master a fore...

“[A] brilliant book…by far the best study yet” (The Wall Street Journal) of the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan and its long-lasting influence on our world.In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s on the rise, US officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would con...

Washington, DC, April 1954: Lee Carson, former war correspondent, is frustrated that her journalism career has been relegated to society events and fashion stories. But when she receives a tip about a Russian spy in a high-ranking government position at the height of the Cold War, she feels the thrill of a story that she hasn't felt since she was on the front lines of the European theater . . .London, December 1943: As war rages on across Europe, twenty-two-year-old Lee Carson is w...