A collection of the New Yorker's groundbreaking writing on race in America, including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more From the pages of the New Yorker comes a bold and telling portrait of Black life in America, with astonishing early work from Rebecca West's account of a lynching trial and James Baldwin's 'Letter from a Region in My Mind' (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time) to more recent writing by Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zadie Smith, Hilton Als, Jamaica Kincaid, Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Alexander, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Doreen St. Félix, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kelefa Sanneh, and more. Reaching back across the last century, The Matter of Black Lives includes a wide array of material from the New Yorker archives ranging across essays, reported pieces, profiles, criticism, and historical pieces. This book addresses everything from the arts to civil rights, matters of justice, and politics, and brings us up to the present day with accounts of what Jelani Cobb calls "The American Spring." The result is a startling, nuanced and, ultimately, indelible portrait of America's complex relationship with race.

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004, edited by Steven Pinker, is another "provocative and thoroughly enjoyable [collection] from start to finish" (Publishers Weekly). Here is the best and newest on science and nature: the psychology of suicide terrorism, desperate measures in surgery, the weird world of octopuses, Sex Week at Yale, the linguistics of click languages, the worst news about cloning, and much more.

Essays inspired by Chabon's interactions with his four children and his own father illuminate the meaning, magic, and mysteries of fatherhood.

The multitalented writers, directors, producers, and actors (as seen on The League, Transparent, and The Mindy Project ) share the secrets of their lifelong partnership in this unique memoir. “A book that anyone will love . . . You can enjoy it even if you have no idea who the Duplass brothers are.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times Whether producing, writing, directing, or acting, the Duplass Brothers have made their mark in the world of independent film and television on the strength of their quirky and empathetic approach to storytelling. Now, for the first time, Mark and Jay take readers on a tour of their lifelong partnership in this unique memoir told in essays that share the secrets of their success, the joys and frustrations of intimate collaboration, and the lessons they’ve learned the hard way. From a childhood spent wielding an oversized home video camera in the suburbs of New Orleans to their shared years at the University of Texas in early-nineties Austin, and from the breakthrough short they made on a three-dollar budget to the night their feature film Baghead became the center of a Sundance bidding war, Mark and Jay tell the story of a bond that’s resilient, affectionate, mutually empowering, and only mildly dysfunctional. They are brutally honest about how their closeness sabotaged their youthful romantic relationships, about the jealousy each felt when the other stole the spotlight as an actor (Mark in The League, Jay in Transparent ), and about the challenges they faced on the set of their HBO series Togetherness —namely, too much togetherness. But Like Brothers is also a surprisingly practical road map to a rewarding creative partnership. Rather than split all their responsibilities fifty-fifty, the brothers learned to capitalize on each other’s strengths. They’re not afraid to call each other out, because they’re also not afraid to compromise. Most relationships aren’t—and frankly shouldn’t be—as intense as Mark and Jay’s, but their brand of trust, validation, and healthy disagreement has taken them far. Part coming-of-age memoir, part underdog story, and part insider account of succeeding in Hollywood on their own terms, Like Brothers is as openhearted and lovably offbeat as Mark and Jay themselves. “Wright. Ringling. Jonas. I’m sure you could name a bunch of famous brother teams. They’re all garbage compared to Mark and Jay. I can’t wait for you to read this book.”—from the foreword by Mindy Kaling

Bestselling author Delia Ephron shares a deeply personal collection of stories and essays, anchored by a loving remembrance of her sister Nora. In Sister Mother Husband Dog, Delia Ephron brings her trademark wit and effervescent prose to a series of autobiographical essays about life, love, sisterhood, movies, and family. In “Losing Nora,” she deftly captures the rivalry, mutual respect, and intimacy that made up her relationship with her older sister and frequent writing companion. Other essays run the gamut from a humorous piece about love and the movies—how one romantic comedy completely destroyed her twenties—to the joy of girl friends and best friendship, the magical madness and miracle of dogs, keen-eyed observations about urban survival, and a serious and affecting memoir of life with her mother and growing up the child of alcoholics. Ephron’s eloquent style and voice illuminate every page of this superb and singular work.

The underground artist and journalist presents a memoir of her years between September 11 and the Occupy movement in New York City to discuss the impact of historical events on her work and her decision to become a witness journalist--

In this deeply smart and sneakily poignant collection of essays, the bestselling author of Fraud and Don’t Get Too Comfortable makes an inspired case for always assuming the worst—because then you’ll never be disappointed. Whether he’s taking on pop culture phenomena with Oscar Wilde-worthy wit or dealing with personal tragedy, Rakoff’s sharp observations and humorist’s flair for the absurd will have you positively reveling in the untapped power of negativity.

In At Large and At Small , Anne Fadiman returns to one of her favorite genres, the familiar essay—a beloved and hallowed literary tradition recognized for both its intellectual breadth and its miniaturist focus on everyday experiences. With the combination of humor and erudition that has distinguished her as one of our finest essayists, Fadiman draws us into twelve of her personal obsessions: from her slightly sinister childhood enthusiasm for catching butterflies to her monumental crush on Charles Lamb, from her wistfulness for the days of letter-writing to the challenges and rewards of moving from the city to the country. Many of these essays were composed "under the influence" of the subject at hand. Fadiman ingests a shocking amount of ice cream and divulges her passion for Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip and her brother's homemade Liquid Nitrogen Kahlúa Coffee (recipe included); she sustains a terrific caffeine buzz while recounting Balzac's coffee addiction; and she stays up till dawn to write about being a night owl, examining the rhythms of our circadian clocks and sharing such insomnia cures as her father's nocturnal word games and Lewis Carroll's mathematical puzzles. At Large and At Small is a brilliant and delightful collection of essays that harkens a revival of a long-cherished genre.

If you ran into Stephen Tobolowsky on the street, you would not be mistaken: Yes, you've seen him before. A childhood dentist? A former geometry teacher? Your local florist? Tobolowsky is a character actor, one of the most prolific screen and stage presences of our time, having appeared in productions that range from Deadwood to Glee , from Mississippi Burning to Groundhog Day . But Stephen Tobolowsky, it turns out, is also a dazzlingly talented storyteller and writer. The Dangerous Animals Club is a beguiling series of stories combining biography and essay, with a tone both hilarious and introspective. The stories have heroics and embarrassments, riotous humor and pathos, characters ranging from Bubbles the Pigmy Hippo to Stephen's unforgettable mother, and scenes that include coke-fueled parties, Hollywood sets, and hospital rooms. Told in a voice that is "wry, discursive, and full of generous spirit and curiosity" ( Kirkus Reviews ), Tobolowsky renders the majestic out of the mundane, profundity from the patently absurd, and grace from tragedy. The Dangerous Animals Club marks the debut of a massively talented storyteller.

Learning to Drive • Now a major motion picture starring Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt now shows us another side of her talent. Learning to Drive is a surprising, revealing, and entertaining collection of essays drawn from the author’s own life. With deep feeling and sharp insight, Pollitt writes about the death of her father; the sad but noble final days of a leftist study group of which she was a member; and the betrayal and heartbreak inflicted by a man who seriously deceived her. (Her infinitely patient, gentle driving instructor points out her weakness—“Observation, Katha, observation!”) She also offers a candid view of her preoccupation with her ex-lover’s haunting presence on the Internet, and her search there for a secret link that might provide a revelation about him that will Explain Everything. Other topics include the differences between women and men—“More than half the male members of the Donner party died of cold and starvation, but three quarters of the females survived, saved by that extra layer of fat we spend our lives trying to get rid of”—and the practical implications of political theory: “What if socialism—all that warmhearted folderol about community and solidarity and sharing was just an elaborate con job, a way for men to avoid supporting their kids?” Learning to Drive demonstrates that while Katha Pollitt is undeniably one of our era’s most profound observers of culture, society, and politics, she is just as impressively a wise, graceful, and honest observer of her own and others’ human nature. Praise for Learning to Drive “The kind of book you want to look up from at points so you can read aloud certain passages to a friend or lover.” — Chicago Tribune “A powerful personal narrative . . . full of insight and charm . . . Pollitt is her own Jane Austen character . . . haughty and modest, moral and irresponsible, sensible and, happily for us, lost in sensibility.” — The New York Review of Books “With . . . bracing self-honesty, Pollitt takes us through the maddening swirl of contradictions at the heart of being fifty-something: the sense of slowing down, of urgency, of wisdom, of ignorance, of strength, of helplessness, of breakdown, of renewal.” — The Seattle Times “Essays of breathtaking candor and razor-sharp humor . . . [Pollitt] has outdone herself. . . . [Her] observations are acute and her confessions tonic. Forget face-lifts; Pollitt’s essays elevate the spirit.” — Booklist (starred review)

For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker: How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it? In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik's simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to look: from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who--in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written--helps him master his own demons. Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life--and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.

While there are people who actually embrace getting older (although we confess not to know any) most try to deny it. Rita Rudner is no exception. When she reached 50, she couldn't even bear to admit it: "It was more comfortable getting a laugh and telling people I was filthy than having to say the word fffiffffty," she writes. In her hysterically dead-on book I Still Have It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It , she relates her absurd adventures as a woman of a certain age navigating the strange and terrifyingly funny world of "near-sighted insights." In chapters such as "Artificially Hip"; "Older Than Springtime, Younger Than Angela Lansbury"; "I Won't Blog, Don't Ask Me"; and "The Advantage of Vintage," Rudner tackles body issues, style, and technology, and looks at the wonders and surprises of life on the dark side of 50. So put on your bifocals and get ready to laugh. Just don't blame Rita if your laugh lines become visibly deeper. "Sexy deadpan is comedian Rita Rudner's trademark style, never more in evidence than in I Still Have It ... I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It ... Pure vaudeville, a kick at any age."-- O, The Oprah Magazine

A timely and profound anthology from the national bestselling author of Black, White and Jewish, Representing a stunning range of essayists and novelists, both men and women, this groundbreaking anthology boldly confronts the complications, possibilities, uncertainties, and joys of being a man in the 21st century.

"You're not doing it right." Writer/comedian Michael Ian Black has been hearing these five words all his life. And now--on the eve of his fortieth birthday--he is finally beginning to wonder why. As a husband and father living in the suburbs, Michael asks the question so many of us ask ourselves at one point or another: How did I end up here? (And also: If Fat Kevin Federline succumbs to his own wasted potential, what does that mean for the rest of us?) The answers to these questions, and others that you probably would have never thought to ask, are painstakingly detailed in Black's debut memoir. Darkly humorous and told with raw honesty, Michael shares his neuroses as he takes on his childhood, his marriage, his children, and his career with candor and deadpan wit in this funny-because-it's-true essay collection.--From publisher description.

From This American Life alum David Rakoff comes a hilarious collection that single-handedly raises self-deprecation to an art form. Whether impersonating Sigmund Freud in a department store window during the holidays, climbing an icy mountain in cheap loafers, or learning primitive survival skills in the wilds of New Jersey, Rakoff clearly demonstrates how he doesn’t belong–nor does he try to. In his debut collection of essays, Rakoff uses his razor-sharp wit and snarky humor to deliver a barrage of damaging blows that, more often than not, land squarely on his own jaw–hilariously satirizing the writer, not the subject. Joining the wry and the heartfelt, Fraud offers an object lesson in not taking life, or ourselves, too seriously.

True stories of sudden death in the classic collection by a master of American journalism “Reporters love murders,” Calvin Trillin writes in the introduction to Killings. “In a pinch, what the lawyers call ‘wrongful death’ will do, particularly if it’s sudden.” Killings, first published in 1984 and expanded for this edition, shows Trillin to be such a reporter, drawn time after time to tales of sudden death. But Trillin is attracted less by violence or police procedure than by the way the fabric of people’s lives is suddenly exposed when someone comes to an untimely end. As Trillin says, Killings is “more about how Americans live than about how some of them die.” These stories, which originally appeared in The New Yorker between 1969 and 2010, are vivid portraits of lives cut short. An upstanding farmer in Iowa finds himself drastically changed by a woman he meets in a cocktail lounge. An eccentric old man in Eastern Kentucky is enraged by the presence of a documentary filmmaker. Two women move to a bucolic Virginia county to find peace, only to end up at war over a shared road. Mexican American families in California hand down a feud from generation to generation. A high-living criminal-defense lawyer in Miami acquires any number of enemies capable of killing him. Stark and compassionate, deeply observed and beautifully written, Killings is “that rarity, reportage as art” (William Geist, The New York Times Book Review ). Praise for Killings “Riveting tales of murder and mayhem. . . . [Calvin] Trillin is a superb writer, with a magical ability to turn even the most mundane detail into spellbinding wonder. Armed with this wealth of material, he utterly shines. Every piece here is a gem.” — The Seattle Times “What Mr. Trillin does so well, what makes Killings literature, is the way he pictures the lives that were interrupted by the murders. Even the most ordinary life makes a terrible noise . . . when it’s broken off.” —Anatole Broyard, The New York Times “Fascinating, troubling . . . In each of these stories is the basis of a Dostoevskian novel.” —Edward Abbey , Chicago Sun-Times “The stories . . . are unforgettable. They leave us, finally, with the awareness of the unknowable opacity of the human heart.” —Bruce Colman , San Francisco Chronicle “[Trillin] writes brilliantly. . . . These stories still hold up, as classics.” — The Buffalo News “In his artful ability to conjure up a whole life and a whole world, Trillin comes as close to achieving the power of a Chekhov short story as can anyone whose material is so implacably tied to fact.” —Frederick Iseman , Harper’s Bazaar “I have a book for you true-crime addicts if you’re caught up on the podcast Serial, the cascade on TV of 48 Hours and Dateline NBC episodes. . . . It’s time to pick up Calvin Trillin’s Killings .” — The New York Times Book Review “Well-crafted and thoughtfully composed, lacking judgment and admonishment, these are a true piece of quality journalism, which clearly continues to captivate audiences.” — Library Journal “With telling detail and shrewd insights, [Calvin Trillin] masterfully evokes the places and personalities that hatched these grim episodes.” — Publishers Weekly

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book A Best Book of the Year — Austin American-Statesman Includes a new, previously uncollected piece: "My Internet" In The Ecstasy of Influence , the incomparable Jonathan Lethem has compiled a career-spanning collection of occasional pieces—essays, memoir, liner notes, fiction, and criticism—which also doubles as a novelist’s manifesto, self-portrait, and confession. The result is an insightful, charming, and entertaining grab bag that covers everything from great novels to old films to graffiti to cyberculture.

Memorable Stories From a Half Century of Sports Journalism For the last half century, Pulitzer Prize–winning sportswriter Ira Berkow has been at the center of some of the most memorable moments in sports history. From the World Series, NBA Finals, and Super Bowl, to Heavyweight Title Fights, the Olympics, and The Masters, he has seen and covered them all. After fifty years covering sports, with more than twenty-five as a journalist for the New York Times , How Life Imitates Sports shares how these events—and their participants—have significantly shaped how we as a nation have come to understand and perceive our culture (and even our politics). They are a historical record of one significant sphere of our life and times: sports. From Muhammad Ali to Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan to LeBron James, Jackie Robinson to Derek Jeter, Billie Jean King to Tonya Harding, O. J. Simpson to Tiger Woods and beyond, this collection is a historical record of our times over this past half century, in terms of society, race and gender, politics, legal issues, and the fabric of our sports passions and human condition, ranging from pathos to humor, from introspection to perception. Including additional commentary on when these events first occurred and how they have impacted us today, Berkow shares the knowledge of someone who sat ringside, in the press box, and on the sidelines for some of the most notable moments in our history. So whether you’re a fan of baseball and basketball, or tennis and soccer, How Life Imitates Sports shows you our history from someone who witnessed it first-hand; a worthy collection for anyone who appreciates the highest quality sports journalism.

Never before has Gordimer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, published such a comprehensive collection of her nonfiction. Telling Tales represents the full span of her works in that field-from the twilight of white rule in South Africa to the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime, and most recently, her role over the past seven years in confronting the contemporary phenomena of violence and the dangers of HIV. The range of this book is staggering, and the work in totality celebrates the lively perseverance of the life-loving individual in the face of political tumult, then the onslaught of a globalized world. The abiding passionate spirit that informs "A South African Childhood," a youthful autobiographical piece published in The New Yorker in 1954, can be found in each of the book's ninety-one pieces that span a period of fifty-five years. Returning to a lifetime of nonfiction work has become an extraordinary experience for Gordimer. She takes from one of her revered great writers, Albert Camus, the conviction that the writer is a "responsible human being" attuned not alone to dedication to the creation of fiction but to the political vortex that inevitably encompasses twentieth- and twenty-first-century life. Born in 1923, Gordimer, who as a child was ambitious to become a ballet dancer, was recognized at fifteen as a writing prodigy. Her sensibility was as much shaped by wide reading as it was to eye-opening sight, passing on her way to school the grim labor compounds where black gold miners lived. These twin decisives-literature and politics-infuse the book, which includes historic accounts of the political atmosphere, firsthand, after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the Soweto uprising of 1976, as well as incisive close-up portraits of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, among others. Gordimer revisits the eternally relevant legacies of Tolstoy, Proust, and Flaubert, and engages vigorously with contemporaries like Susan Sontag, Octavio Paz, and Edward Said. But some of her most sensuous writing comes in her travelogues, where the politics of Africa blend seamlessly with its awe-inspiring nature-including spectacular recollections of childhood holidays beside South Africa's coast of the Indian Ocean and a riveting account of her journey the length of the Congo River in the wake of Conrad. Gordimer's body of work is an extraordinary vision of the world that harks back to the sensibilities-political, moral, and social-of Dickens and Tolstoy, but with a decidedly vivid contemporary consciousness. Telling Times becomes both a literary exploration and extraordinary document of social and political history in our times.