Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character. They had read or listened to each other’s words at crucial turning points in their lives, and both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the Civil War. In this radiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Drawing on a rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts and diary records, Epstein shows how the influence and reverence flowed between these two men–and brings to life the many friends and contacts they shared. Epstein has written a masterful portrait of two great American figures and the era they shaped through words and deeds.

At 32, Jake Singer is trapped inside not only his own thoughts but also those of his antic, hectoring psychiatrist, a "madman privateer for whom conservative Freudianism was merely a flag of convenience." In between his triweekly skirmishes with the malaprop-slinging Dr. Morales, Jake does manage to carry he teaches at Coventry, a New York City private school, and has a small trust fund and an adequate Upper West Side apartment. Yet the protagonist of Daniel Menaker's first novel is increasingly alone. He hasn't seen his doctor father in four years, his mother died when he was six, and his most recent girlfriend left him. "I wasn't so crazy that I didn't know how boring my plight would be to most people," he later realizes. "Even the banality of evil is outstripped by the banality of anxiety neurosis." In fact, there's nothing remotely banal about Jake's anxiety, which Menaker makes both very real and very, very funny. Though Dr. Morales is dead-on about his patient's inertia, his antic method gives the term critical care (not to mention shrink wrap ) new meaning. Indeed, Jake and his doctor's hostilities are both hilarious and deeply painful, skidding between progress and "emotional vivisection." Is the foul-mouthed, foul-minded Morales a sport of psychiatric nature, or is he on the right track? Neither patient nor reader will ever be quite sure, though Jake does come out of his long slump, inheriting the responsibility for his own life--and those of several others. The Treatment ruffles with comic energy and risky shifts, but also with something increasingly rare in fiction--tenderness. Menaker, unlike his protagonist, seems unafraid of emotion and has a perfect ear for the momentary exchange that simultaneously reveals and conceals all. He can also dish up epigrams with the best of them. Jake turns Wallace Stevens's hieratic pronunciamento into a surprising home "If death is in fact the mother of beauty, she never spends any time with her kids." Any reader interested in the fresh pleasures of language, character, and sharp social landscaping should look no further. The Treatment is both a merry novel about loss and a melancholy fiction about the pleasures of intimacy--sexual, familial, and, of course, therapeutic.

Winner of the 2020 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, France's best foreign book of the year. 'Astounding' Sebastian Barry 'A masterpiece' Ayad Akhtar 'This little book is ruminative, humane, and gorgeously precise' Jonathan Lethem In this genre-defying book, best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own-works that pondered the nature of narrative itself. Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul. Francois Fenelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey,The Adventures of Telemachus - a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for one hundred years - resulted in his banishment. And the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn's struggles to write two of his own books-a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father-that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life.

These wise and witty columns of "The New York Times'" first Public Editor, along with a report from him of his time at the paper, are indispensable for anyone who cares about how journalism is practiced. From December 2003 to May 2005, Daniel Okrent served as "The New York Times'" first "Public Editor", a position created following the newspaper's Jayson Blair scandal and the tumultuous reign and resignation of Howell Raines as Executive Editor. His mission: read the paper and provide his assessments, without guidance from the paper itself and without fear or favour of how well it executed its responsibility, to provide objective, accurate and complete coverage of the world-at-large. Not an easy task, but the "New York Times" chose the right editor for the job. Experienced, witty and wise, opinionated but never shrill, he delivered. Okrent addressed subjects ranging from WMD coverage, reporter self-promotion and pulling for or piling on political candidates, to the Tony Awards, to the great delight and consternation of the paper's readers and its own newsroom. Now, collected, amended and assessed by Okrent, here are the complete columns of his rocky and illuminating eighteen months along with an evaluation of the entire experience; its ups and downs and what he thinks he got right and got wrong. This is a smart, serious, entertaining and long-lasting look at what today's finest journalism does well - and what it can do better.

From December 2003 to May 2005, Daniel Okrent served as the New York Times ' first "Public Editor," a position created following the newspaper's Jayson Blair scandal and the tumultuous reign and resignation of Howell Raines as Executive Editor. His mission: read the paper and provide his assessments, without guidance from the paper itself and without fear or favor, of how well it executed its responsibility to provide objective, accurate, and complete coverage of the world-at-large. Not an easy task, but the New York Times chose the right writer for the job. Experienced, wise and witty, opinionated but never shrill, he delivered. Okrent addressed subjects ranging from WMD coverage, reporter self-promotion, pulling for or piling on political candidates, and corrections policy, to the Tony Awards, to the great delight and consternation of the paper's readers, and those in its own newsroom. Now, collected, amended, and assessed by Okrent here are the complete columns of his rocky and illuminating eighteen months along with an evaluation of the entire experience; its ups and downs and what he thinks he got right and got wrong. This is a smart, serious, entertaining, and longlasting look at what today's finest journalism does well— and what it can do better.

International institutions, from the International Monetary Fund to the International Olympic Committee, are perceived as bastions of sclerotic mediocrity at best and outright corruption at worst, and this perception is generally not far off the mark. In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, Daniel W. Drezner, like so many others, looked at the smoking ruins of the global economy and wondered why global economic governance structure had failed so spectacularly, and what could be done to reform them in the future. But then a funny thing happened. As he surveyed their actions in the wake of the crash, he realized that the evidence pointed to the exact opposite conclusion: global economic governance had succeeded. In The System Worked, Drezner, a renowned political scientist and international relations expert, contends that despite the massive scale and reverberations of this latest crisis (larger, arguably, than those that precipitated the Great Depression), the global economy has bounced back remarkably well. Examining the major resuscitation efforts by the G-20 IMF, WTO, and other institutions, he shows that, thanks to the efforts of central bankers and other policymakers, the international response was sufficiently coordinated to prevent the crisis from becoming a full-fledged depression. Yet the narrative about the failure of multilateral economic institutions persists, both because the Great Recession affected powerful nations whose governments managed their own economies poorly, and because the most influential policy analysts who write the books and articles on the crisis hail from those nations. Nevertheless, Drezner argues, while it's true that the global economy is still fragile, these institutions survived the "stress test" of the financial crisis, and may have even become more resilient and valuable in the process. Bucking the conventional wisdom about the new "G-Zero World," Drezner rehabilitates the image of the much-maligned international institutions and demolishes some of the most dangerous myths about the financial crisis. The System Worked is a vital contribution to our understanding of an area where the stakes could not be higher.

Traces the development of the energy crisis and concludes that a serious program of conservation is needed

A compilation of writings by more than 150 women, including renowned poets, novelists, essayists, journalists, and activists.

"A kaleidoscope of creativity . . . unsentimental and sometimes unpredictable."-- Journal of the American Medical Association Founded just six years ago, Bellevue Literary Review is already widely recognized as a rare forum for emerging and celebrated writers--among them Julia Alvarez, Raphael Campo, Rick Moody, and Abraham Verghese--on issues of health and healing. Gathered here are poignant and prizewinning stories, essays, and poems, the voices of patients and those who care for them, which form the journal's remarkable dialogue on "humanity and the human experience." Danielle Ofri, MD , author of Incidental Findings and Singular Intimacies , is the editor in chief of Bellevue Literary Review . She lives in New York City.

Every year Freddie and his mother and sister visit Dr. Joe for their annual check-ups. Dr. Joe always takes good care of the kids and eases their fears.

When Freddie kicks his soccer ball into the street and runs after it without watching for traffic, he learns a valuable lesson about safety.

Freddie learns to confront his fears when he sleeps over at his friend Michael's house for the first time.

Freddie and his siblings have both fights and fun on their family vacation to Williamsburg and Cape Canaveral.

Hilary learns an important lesson in safety: never accept a ride from a stranger.

A new girl from Paris arrives to spend the year at Martha's school and they become very good friends.

Five-year-old Martha is troubled by her mother's impending marriage, but talking things over with her understanding father helps her to view the situation with enthusiasm after all.

Seven-year-old Martha learns a lesson about responsibility when Daddy gives her a playful new pet.

When six-year-old Martha moves with her mother and new stepfather to Sausalito, she dreads going to a new school, but finds it a very pleasant experience after all.

Max's twin brother and sister annoy him so much that he runs away from home.