In The Program Era, Mark McGurl offers a fundamental reinterpretation of postwar American fiction, asserting that it can be properly understood only in relation to the rise of mass higher education and the creative writing program. McGurl asks both how the patronage of the university has reorganized American literature and—even more important—how the increasing intimacy of writing and schooling can be brought to bear on a reading of this literature.McGurl argues that far f...

**National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistBest Book of Fall (Esquire) and a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 (Lit Hub)What Has Happened to Fiction in the Age of Platform Capitalism?**Since it was first launched in 1994, Amazon has changed the world of literature. The “Everything Store” has not just transformed how we buy books; it has affected what we buy, and even what we read. In Everything and Less, acclaimed critic Mark McGurl explores...

Once upon a time there were good American novels and bad ones, but none was thought of as a work of art. The Novel Art tells the story of how, beginning with Henry James, this began to change. Examining the late-nineteenth century movement to elevate the status of the novel, its sources, paradoxes, and reverberations into the twentieth century, Mark McGurl presents a more coherent and wide-ranging account of the development of American modernist fiction than ever before.Mo...

Since 2012, Public Books has championed a new kind of community for intellectual engagement, discussion, and action. An online magazine that unites the best of the university with the openness of the internet, Public Books is where new ideas are debuted, old facts revived, and dangerous illusions dismantled. Here, young scholars present fresh thinking to audiences outside the academy, accomplished authors weigh in on timely issues, and a wide range of readers encounter th...

This “fun, brain-twisting book . . . will make you think” as it explores 75+ paradoxes in math, philosophy, physics, and social science (Sean Carroll, New York Times–bestselling author of Something Deeply Hidden).Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician’s purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn’t require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstr...

**A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEARSeven Deadly Sins will explore the underlying nature of the seven deadly sins, their neuroscientific and psychological basis, and their origin in our genes.**Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Pride. Envy. Lust. Anger. These are The Seven Deadly Sins, the vices of humankind that define immorality. But do these sins really represent moral failings, or are they simply important and useful biological functions that humans need to...

"When you get in that zone, it's just this supreme confidence; you know it's going in. It's not a matter of if… it's just that it's going in… and you just have supreme confidence..." Kobe Bryant, basketball legend.From top athletes and successful coaches to world-class creatives, famous artists, and major companies like Toyota, Patagonia, and Ericsson—they are all singing the praises of flow.Flow is the state of total absorption in an activity. Everything f...

**A national bestseller!Bust the math myths that are holding you and your kids back and learn the importance of numeracy with this one-of-a-kind resource for parents, educators, and policymakers**Shalinee Sharma is one of the world’s top experts on math learning, but when she was in school, she sat in the back row, unsure if she could ever master the subject. Many of us buy into the idea that some people are innately good at math and others just won’t ever succeed at it—but...

**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...

Tour the history of human invention—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts—in this history book from the New York Times-bestselling author of How the World Really Works.A BILL GATES RECOMMENDED BOOK: “Every Smil book that I own is marked up with lots of notes that I take while reading. Invention and Innovation is no exception.”The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil, author of New York Time...

THE REALITY OF SPACE SETTLEMENT: An astrophysicist ponders the ethics of living in space for anyone interested in space exploration and the philosophy of science.Before we embark on Star Trek-type missions, we must first ask: Can we truly do better in space than we’ve done here on Earth?We’ve pinpointed the destination, refined the technology, designed the habitat, outfitted our space residents. Are we forgetting something...

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE BIG BANG? A physics professor offers a theory about the ultimate origin of the universe—and challenges the concept of a multiverse, string theory, and more.In the beginning was the Big Bang: an unimaginably hot fire almost 14 billion years ago in which the first elements were forged. The physical theory of the hot nascent universe—the Big Bang—was one of the most consequential developments in 20th-century science. And yet it leaves...