Literary Nonfiction

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” – The New York Times A wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race—and promises to change the way we read American literature—from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner "[Morrison] boldly...reimagines and remaps the possibility of...

In this book, Jaime Harker uncovers a largely forgotten literary renaissance in southern letters. Anchored by a constellation of southern women, the Women in Print movement grew from the queer union of women's liberation, civil rights activism, gay liberation, and print culture. Broadly influential from the 1970s through the 1990s, the Women in Print movement created a network of writers, publishers, bookstores, and readers that fostered a remarkable array of literature.

The nonfiction debut from beloved international sensation and #1 New York Times bestselling author Tatiana de Rosnay: her bestselling biography of novelist Daphne du Maurier. “It's impressive how Tatiana was able to recreate the personality of my mother, including her sense of humor. It is...

One of America's favorite African-American storytellers remembers her childhood in tender, unforgettable new stories. Jackie Torrence, a frequent headliner at the National Storytelling Festival, is known to audiences nationwide as The Story Lady.

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. The book provides a veritable catalog of the thinkers who created the intellectual foundation of the twentieth century.

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises). What if a lifesaving...

Spiritual beings populate the stories of Scripture. Angels singing. Demons infecting. Heavenly hosts fighting . . . Ignore the armies of God and Satan and you ignore the heart of Scripture. Ever since the snake tempted Eve in Eden, we've known: there is more to this world than meets the eye. In...

Over 20 years ago, in a small Israeli town, a desperate mother told a remarkable lie. She told her friends and family that her newborn child had died. That lie became the catalyst for the unfolding truth of the adoption of that same baby - Michael - who is, in fact, very much alive and now 22 years-old. He also has Down syndrome. When Kathryn Hulings adopted Michael as an infant, she could not have known that he would save her life when she became gravely ill and was left forever physically compromised.

In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.

What is the good life? Proverbs: Audio Lectures, taught by Christopher Ansberry, answers this question across different collections and through different poetic forms, each of which are designed to (trans)form one's character. This project of character formation assumes that wisdom and virtue...

This program includes an introduction read by the author. The New York Times–bestselling author of Find Me and Call Me by Your Name returns to the essay form with his collection of thoughts on time, the creative mind, and great lives and works. Irrealis moods are the set of verbal moods that...

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history, including Geoffrey Chaucer, writer of the first great works of English literature; William Shakespeare, writer of the greatest plays in history; Charles Dickens, who wanted to make England a better place; Victor Hugo, the French writer who cared about the poor; Leo Tolstoy, the man who wrote War and Peace; and Rudyard Kipling, who wrote The Jungle Book and won a Nobel Prize.

This program includes archival recordings of Ernest Hemingway Hemingway's deeply reflective account of his destructive Paris affair and how it affected the legendary life he rebuilt after, as told to his best friend, the writer A.E. Hotchner. In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend...

What kind of mother abandons her child? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who overcame both society’s condemnation and their own maternal guilt to leave their children—at will or due to economic or other circumstances. The Abandoners is sharp, at times slyly humorous, and always deeply empathetic.

Anshel Brusilow started playing violin in 1933 at age five, in a Russian Jewish neighborhood of Philadelphia where practicing your instrument was as ordinary as hanging out the laundry. His playing wasn’t ordinary, though. At 16, he was soloing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brusilow turned in his violin bow for the baton and created his own Philadelphia Chamber Symphony. Next he took on the then-troubled Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Brusilow played with or conducted many top-tier classical musicians and has something to say about each one. He also made many recordings.

In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, cruel human medical experiments, eyewitness accounts of brutal murders of men, women, children, and even infants, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually explicit view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people.

“Arbitrary Stupid Goal is a completely riveting world—when I looked up from its pages regular life seemed boring and safe and modern like one big iPhone. This book captures not just a lost New York but a whole lost way of life.” —Miranda July In Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin...

In the 1970s, Lee Gutkind, a leather-clad hippie motorcyclist and former public relations writer, fought his way into the academy. His goal: to make creative nonfiction an accepted academic discipline, one as vital as poetry, drama, and fiction. In this book Gutkind tells the true story of how creative nonfiction became a leading genre for both audiences and writers.

What did your face look like before your parents were born? In The Face: A Time Code, best-selling author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki recounts, in moment-to-moment detail, a profound encounter with memory and the mirror. According to ancient Zen tradition, 'your face before your parents were born' is your original face. Who are you? What is your true self? What is your identity before or beyond the dualistic distinctions, like father/mother and good/evil, that come to define us?