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...

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...

Fifteen brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction seminal essays and nonfiction pieces by bestselling author David Foster Wallace that explores tennis, literature, philosophy, and popular culture with his signature blend of intellectual depth, humor, and relentless curiosity.**"one of America's most daring and talented writers." —**Los Angeles Times Book ReviewNever has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more e...

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...

Fifteen never-before-collected essays by "one of America's most daring and talented writers" all published in book form for the first time ( Los Angeles Times Book Review).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 toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Pros...

In this compendium of literary wisdom, celebrated authors share insights and anecdotes on the art of turning good stories into bestsellers.Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd, hosts of the renowned podcast Always Take Notes, have spent years delving into the lives and minds of literary luminaries. Now they share the most illuminating and unforgettable interview moments, as writers from Irvine Welsh to Tracy Chevalier and Marlon James reveal the secrets to their su...

The book that inspired the stories of Gladiator & Gladiator II: Step into the ring with this classic, in-depth account of the ancient Romans' obsession with the bloody and brutal games."[ The Way of the Gladiator is] this crazy, tawdry, wild book about the Coliseum. . . . It hardwired in my brain the absolute similarities between who we are and who we were." —David Franzoni, Academy Award–nominated scree...

**Get a science-based introduction to cultural and human evolution—and discover a blueprint for a better future—in this fascinating book for fans of Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel.Who are we, and what makes us different from other species?**Playing on the phrase “a theory of everything” from physics, Michael Muthukrishna’s ambitious, original, and deeply hopeful book A Theory of Everyone draws on the most recent research from across t...

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...

Based on a wildly popular UC Berkeley course, how to use scientists’ tricks of the trade to make the best decisions and solve the hardest problems in age of uncertainty and overwhelming information.In our deluge of information, it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish the revelatory from the contradictory. How do we make health decisions in the face of conflicting medical advice? Does the research cited in that article even show what the authors claim? How can...

**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...