A former New Yorker editor and book publisher shares a " ruefully funny insider's tour of the publishing world" in this delightful memoir (Vogue.com).A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceDaniel Menaker started as a fact checker at The New Yorker in 1969. With luck, hard work, and the support of William Maxwell, he was eventually promoted to editor. Never beloved by the magazine's legendary editor William Shaw...

"For language lovers, this book, with all its verbal tangles and wit, is sure to, in its own words, 'pass mustard'" ( Poets & Writers).Inspired by Daniel Menaker's tenure at the New Yorker, this collection of comical, revelatory errors foraged from the wilds of everyday English comes with commentary by the author, illustrations by Roz Chast, and a foreword from Billy Collins.During his time at the renowned magazine, Menaker happened acros...

A stylish, funny and surprising guide to the art of conversation, from one of New York's foremost literary wits.A GOOD TALK is an analysis of and guide to that most exclusively human of all activities-- conversation.Drawing on over forty years of experience in American letters, Menaker pinpoints the factors that drive and enliven every good conversation: the vagaries (and joys) of subtext; the deeper structure and meaning of conversational...

Roz Chast brings her brilliant, hilarious artwork to No Fair! No Fair! and Other Jolly Poems of Childhood by Calvin Trillin and The African Svelte: Ingenious Misspellings That Make Surprising Sense by Daniel Menaker, as well as her own memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?. Join us for a conversation moderated by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker) between the artist and authors, plus readings by Jane Curtin and Reg Rogers (The Knick).

Roz Chast brings her brilliant, hilarious artwork to No Fair! No Fair! and Other Jolly Poems of Childhood by Calvin Trillin and The African Svelte: Ingenious Misspellings That Make Surprising Sense by Daniel Menaker, as well as her own memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?. Join us for a conversation moderated by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker) between the artist and authors, plus readings by Jane Curtin and Reg Rogers (The Knick).

Delve into the fascinating world of dirt in this history of culture, cleanliness, and our evolving perceptions of what is and isn't gross.In this engaging and often humorous study of life's imperfections, public health and hygiene authority Terence McLaughlin dissects our attitudes toward the filth that has accompanied society throughout human history. According to him, "dirt" is a matter of opinion.Cultural attitudes about everything from factory smoke to ...

This "excellent" popular science book explores just what we—and the things around us—are made of ( Aftenposten, Norway).Some elements get all the attention: glittering gold, radioactive uranium—materials we call "precious" because they are so rare. But what could be more precious than the building blocks of life—from the oxygen in our air to the carbon in all living things?In The Elements We Live By, physicist and award-winning author Anja R...

Ten thrilling and intriguing tales of space travel, war, and alien encounters from the multiple Hugo Award–winning Grand Master of Science Fiction.This magnificent compendium of stories, written during science fiction's golden age, highlights Clifford D. Simak at his very best, combining ingenious concepts with his trademark humanism and exploring strange visitations, remarkable technologies, and humankind's destiny in the possible worlds of tomorrow. Whether it's ...

**A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • An “elegantly argued and exuberantly narrated” (The New York Times Book Review) look at the building of social movements—from the 1600s to the present—and how current technology is undermining them“A bravura work of scholarship and reporting, featuring amazing individuals and dramatic events from seventeenth-century France to Rome, Moscow, Cairo, and contemporary Minneapolis.”—Louis Menand...

This definitive, single-volume edition of the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography delivers "a Lincoln whom no other man . . . could have given us" ( New York Herald Tribune Book Review).Celebrated for his vivid depictions of the nineteenth-century American Midwest, Carl Sandburg brings unique insight to the life of Abraham Lincoln in this distinguished biography. He captures both the man who grew up on the Indiana prairie and the president who held the countr...

The remarkable story of Gudrid, the female explorer who sailed from Iceland to the New World a millennium ago.Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, no one believed that the details of Gudrid's story ...

The true story of a colorful and momentous 16th-century voyage, and of the Black mariner whose accomplishment was almost lost to history.It was a voyage of epic scope. In a Spanish plot to break Portugal's trade monopoly with the fabled Orient, four ships set sail from a hidden Mexican port. The smallest of them was guided by Black seaman Lope Martín, one of the most qualified pilots of the era. Mutiny, murderous encounters with Pacific islanders, and extreme physi...