In any age, humans wrestle with apparently inexorable forces. Today, we face the threat of global terrorism. In the aftermath of September 11, few could miss sensing that a great evil was at work in the world. In Flannery O’Connor’s time, the threats came from different sources—World War II, the Cold War, and the Korean conflict—but they were just as real. She, too, lived though a “time of terror.” The first major critical volume on Flannery O’Connor’s work in more than a decade, Flann...

As defined by conservation biologist Thomas Fleishner, natural history is “a practice of intentional, focused receptivity to the more-than-human world . . . one of the oldest continuous human traditions.” Seldom is this idea so clearly reflected as in classic works of American fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.John Cullen Gruesser’s edited volume Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction features essays by prominent litera...

This Companion examines the full range and vigor of the American novel. From the American exceptionalism of James Fenimore Cooper to the apocalyptic post-Americanism of Cormac McCarthy, these newly commissioned essays from leading scholars and critics chronicle the major aesthetic innovations that have shaped the American novel over the past two centuries. The essays evaluate the work, life and legacy of influential American novelists including Melville, Twain, James, Wharton, Cather, Faul...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Anna Quindlen presents a “swift and compelling paean to the joys of books” (Booklist).“Like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, [How Reading Changed My Life] is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary, and a pleasure to read.”—Publishers Weekly“Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. . . . Yet of all the many things in w...

The legendary reporter and author of The Right Stuff takes on Darwin, Chomsky, and the origin of language in "his boldest bit of dueling yet" ( The New York Times).Tom Wolfe, the great journalist-provocateur, aims his piercing wit at the presiding theories of what makes us human. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech—not evolution—is responsible for humanity's com...

**"Re-centers and gives voice to a diversity of women naturalists and writers across time." —**Cultivating PlaceIn Writing Wild, Kathryn Aalto celebrates 25 women whose influential writing helps deepen our connection to and understanding of the natural world. These inspiring wordsmiths are scholars, spiritual seekers, conservationists, scientists, novelists, and explorers. They defy easy categorization, yet they all share a bold authenticity that ...

"Magisterial . . . make[s] you suddenly see new things in familiar books . . . brilliant analyses of a dozen or so front-runners in the Great American Novel sweepstakes." —Michael Dirda, Virginia Quarterly ReviewThe idea of "the great American novel" continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying more than 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to t...

A finalist for the National Book Award in NonfictionA finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in NonfictionNamed a Best Book of 2023 by The New York Times, NPR, New York magazine, Kirkus, and Barnes and NobleThe critically acclaimed author of In the Wake, “Christina Sharpe is a brilliant thinker who attends unflinchingly to the brutality of our current arrangeme...

"Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics."—Flannery O'ConnorFlannery O'Connor's work has been described as "profane, blasphemous, and outrageous." Her stories are peopled by a sordid caravan of murderers and thieves, prostitutes and bigots whose lives are punctuated by horror and sudd...

From one of the world's most passionately engaged and acclaimed literary citizens comes Writing with Intent, the largest collection to date of Margaret Atwood's nonfiction, ranging from 1983 to 2005. Composed of autobiographical essays, cultural commentary, book reviews, and introductory pieces to great works of literature, this is the award-winning author's first book-length nonfiction publication in twenty years. Arranged chronologically, these writings display the development of Atwood'...

Every reader can name at least one book that changed his or her life—and many more beloved titles will surely come to mind as well. In The Book That Changed My Life, fifteen of America’s most influential authors discuss their own special literary choices. These unique interviews with National Book Award winners and finalists offer new insights into the many ways in which the experience of reading shapes the act of writing. Robert Stone on Joseph Conrad’s Victory, Cynthia ...

Culture, Not PoliticsWe live in a politicized time. Culture wars and increasingly partisan conflicts have reduced public discourse to shouting matches between ideologues. But rather than merely bemoaning the vulgarity and sloganeering of this era, says acclaimed author and editor Gregory Wolfe, we should seek to enrich the language of civil discourse. And the best way to do that, Wolfe believes, is to draw nourishment from the deepest sources of culture: art and rel...