INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER " My Body offers a lucid examination of the mirrors in which its author has seen herself, and her indoctrination into the cult of beauty as defined by powerful men. In its more transcendent passages . . . the author steps beyond the reach of any 'Pygmalion' and becomes a more dangerous kind of beautiful. She becomes a kind of god in her own right: an artist." —Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review A deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity from Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book. My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski’s life while investigating the culture’s fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women’s sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the gray area between consent and abuse. Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.

Soak up the wisdom of the inimitable Nora Ephron with this stunning 20th-anniversary special edition, featuring a foreword by Dolly Alderton. The perfect gift for yourself or a friend. 'Ephron has an uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, whoever you are' NEW YORK TIMES. ' The book that most influenced me' LILY ALLEN Acclaimed Hollywood filmwriter and director Nora Ephron examines the indignities of ageing in a collection of wickedly witty autobiographical pieces such as 'I Hate My Handbag', 'Blind as a Bat' and 'What I Wish I'd Known'. I Feel Bad About My Neck offers the consolation that no matter how much your neck sags, your boobs droop, your skin wrinkles and your children don't appreciate you, someone has been there before you. Nora Ephron captures the essence of what it means to be an older woman in an irresistible, laugh-out-loud funny, frank and unexpectedly moving book that every woman should have on their shelves.

Nora Ephron returns with her first book since the astounding success of I Feel Bad About My Neck, taking a cool, hard, hilarious look at the past, the present, and the future, bemoaning the vicissitudes of modern life, and recalling with her signature clarity and wisdom everything she hasn’t (yet) forgotten. Ephron writes about falling hard for a way of life (“Journalism: A Love Story”) and about breaking up even harder with the men in her life (“The D Word”); lists “Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again” (“There is no explaining the stock market but people try”; “You can never know the truth of anyone’s marriage, including your own”; “Cary Grant was Jewish”; “Men cheat”); reveals the alarming evolution, a decade after she wrote and directed You’ve Got Mail, of her relationship with her in-box (“The Six Stages of E-Mail”); and asks the age-old question, which came first, the chicken soup or the cold? All the while, she gives candid, edgy voice to everything women who have reached a certain age have been thinking . . . but rarely acknowledging. Filled with insights and observations that instantly ring true—and could have come only from Nora Ephron— I Remember Nothing is pure joy. From the Hardcover edition.

In this "moving and powerful memoir" (Mayim Bialik), comedian Moshe Kasher details his outrageously dysfunctional early years in this darkly hilarious, absurd coming-of-age story. Rising young comedian Moshe Kasher is lucky to be alive. He started using drugs when he was just 12. At that point, he had already been in psychoanlysis for 8 years. By the time he was 15, he had been in and out of several mental institutions, drifting from therapy to rehab to arrest to...you get the picture. But Kasher in the Rye is not an "eye opener" to the horrors of addiction. It's a hilarious memoir about the absurdity of it all. When he was a young boy, Kasher's mother took him on a vacation to the West Coast. Well it was more like an abduction. Only not officially. She stole them away from their father and they moved to Oakland , California. That's where the real fun begins, in the war zone of Oakland Public Schools. He was more than just out of control-his mother walked him around on a leash, which he chewed through and ran away. Brutally honest and laugh-out-loud funny, Kasher's first literary endeavor finds humor in even the most horrifying situations.

#1 New York Times Bestseller "Amy Schumer's book will make you love her even more. For a comedian of unbridled (and generally hilarious) causticity, Schumer has written a probing, confessional, unguarded, and, yes, majorly humanizing non-memoir, a book that trades less on sarcasm, and more on emotional resonance." — Vogue " The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is an alternatingly meditative, sexually explicit, side-splittingly hilarious, heart-wrenching, disturbing, passionately political, and always staggeringly authentic ride through the highs and lows of the comedic powerhouse's life to date." — Harper's Bazaar "This is your happy hour with Amy Schumer...It's Bossypants meets Trainwreck meets your long weekend." —TheSkimm “Amy’s got your back. She’s in your corner. She’s an honesty bomb. And she’s coming for you. ” —Actress Tilda Swinton and Trainwreck co-star The Emmy Award-winning comedian, actress, writer, and star of Inside Amy Schumer, Hulu's Life & Beth, and the acclaimed film Trainwreck has taken the entertainment world by storm with her winning blend of smart, satirical humor. Now, Amy Schumer has written a refreshingly candid and uproariously funny collection of ( extremely ) personal and observational essays. In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo , Amy mines her past for stories about her teenage years, her family, relationships, and sex and shares the experiences that have shaped who she is—a woman with the courage to bare her soul to stand up for what she believes in, all while making us laugh. Ranging from the raucous to the romantic, the heartfelt to the harrowing, this highly entertaining and universally appealing collection is the literary equivalent of a night out with your best friend—an unforgettable and fun adventure that you wish could last forever. Whether she’s experiencing lust-at-first-sight while in the airport security line, sharing her own views on love and marriage, admitting to being an introvert, or discovering her cross-fit instructor’s secret bad habit, Amy Schumer proves to be a bighearted, brave, and thoughtful storyteller that will leave you nodding your head in recognition, laughing out loud, and sobbing uncontrollably—but only because it’s over.

Step into Jenny Slate's wild imagination in this "magical" (Mindy Kaling), "delicious" (Amy Sedaris), and "poignant" (John Mulaney) New York Times bestseller about love, heartbreak, and being alive -- "this book is something new and wonderful" (George Saunders). You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright , as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of "Obvious Child." But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion, and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time. In her dazzling, impossible-to-categorize debut, Jenny channels the pain and beauty of life in writing so fresh, so new, and so burstingly alive, we catch her vision like a fever and bring it back out into the bright day with us, where everything has changed. One of Vanity Fair' s Great Quarantine Reads.

Instant New York Times bestseller! A Winner of the Barondess/Lincoln Award A Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite Book of 2018 A Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2018 A Mental Floss Best Book of 2018 A USA Today Top 10 Hot Book for Summer "Makes you feel as if you are watching a live camera riveted on a courtroom more than 150 years ago." --Diane Sawyer The true story of Abraham Lincoln's last murder trial, a case in which he had a deep personal involvement--and which played out in the nation's newspapers as he began his presidential campaign At the end of the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln was hired to defend him. This was to be his last great case as a lawyer. What normally would have been a local case took on momentous meaning. Lincoln's debates with Stephen Douglas had gained him a national following. He was being urged to make a run for the presidency. His reputation was untarnished, but should he lose this trial, the spotlight now focused so brightly on him might be dimmed. The case also posed personal challenges for Lincoln. The victim had trained for the law in his office, and Lincoln had been his friend and his mentor. The accused killer, the young man Lincoln would defend, was the son of a close friend and supporter. And to win this trial he would have to form an allegiance with a bitter political rival. Lincoln's Last Trial captures the presidential hopeful's dramatic courtroom confrontations in vivid detail as he fights for his client--but also for his own political future.

Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year Final reflections on a happy life-from acclaimed historian Tony Judt. Tony Judt's The Memory Chalet is a memoir unlike any other. Each essay brings the smallest details of personal experience into the larger frame of history. Judt's youthful love of a London bus route becomes a reflection on public civility. Food and trains and smells all come alive as Judt takes us from the postwar London of his childhood through Paris, Prague, and points east to New York, where he found his home. Judt brings his moral clarity and wit to bear on everything from fast cars to radical politics and, finally, the devastating illness that took his life. This book, composed when Judt was paralyzed and unable physically to write, found its shape in the ordered rooms of a Swiss Chalet of the mind: a warm refuge in the closing darkness of his final years. Judt's book, Ill Fares the Land , republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer , Ta-Nehisi Coates.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Magnificent.” — The New York Times * “Beguiling, observant, and howlingly funny.” — San Francisco Chronicle * “Spectacular.” — Star Tribune (Minneapolis) * “Full of astonishments.” — The Boston Globe Susan Orlean—the beloved New Yorker staff writer hailed as “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Library Book —gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals. “How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,” writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon , she’s been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals , she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career. These stories consider a range of creatures—the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with who are central to human life. In her own backyard, Orlean discovers the delights of keeping chickens. In a different backyard, in New Jersey, she meets a woman who has twenty-three pet tigers—something none of her neighbors knew about until one of the tigers escapes. In Iceland, the world’s most famous whale resists the efforts to set him free; in Morocco, the world’s hardest-working donkeys find respite at a special clinic. We meet a show dog and a lost dog and a pigeon who knows exactly how to get home. Equal parts delightful and profound, enriched by Orlean’s stylish prose and precise research, these stories celebrate the meaningful cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.

Welcome to Chelsea Handler's world—a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense. When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power—vodka. Seems reasonable, when considering that she discovered her boyfriend was having an affair with a Peekapoo and she had to pretend to be honeymooning with her father in order to upgrade to first class. In this highly entertaining, deliciously skewed collection, Chelsea mines her past for stories about her family, relationships, and career that are at once singular and ridiculous. Whether she’s convincing her third-grade class that she has been chosen to play Goldie Hawn’s daughter in the sequel to Private Benjamin , deciding to be more egalitarian by dating a redhead, or looking out for a foulmouthed, rum-swilling little person who looks just like her...only smaller, Chelsea has a knack for getting herself into the most outrageous situations. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea showcases the candor and irresistible turns of phrase that have made her one of the freshest voices in comedy today.

"The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan's first book of new writing since 2004's Chronicles: Volume One and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers a master class on the art and craft of songwriting. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan's unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work's transcendence. In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years, and like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement"

The best-selling author of BRINGING UP BÉBÉ investigates life in her forties, and wonders whether her mind will ever catch up with her face. When Pamela Druckerman turns 40, waiters start calling her "Madame," and she detects a disturbing new message in mens' gazes: I would sleep with her, but only if doing so required no effort whatsoever . Yet forty isn't even technically middle-aged anymore. And after a lifetime of being clueless, Druckerman can finally grasp the subtext of conversations, maintain (somewhat) healthy relationships and spot narcissists before they ruin her life. What are the modern forties, and what do we know once we reach them? What makes someone a "grown-up" anyway? And why didn't anyone warn us that we'd get cellulite on our arms? Part frank memoir, part hilarious investigation of daily life, There Are No Grown-Ups diagnoses the in-between decade when... • Everyone you meet looks a little bit familiar. • You're matter-of-fact about chin hair. • You can no longer wear anything ironically. • There's at least one sport your doctor forbids you to play. • You become impatient while scrolling down to your year of birth. • Your parents have stopped trying to change you. • You don't want to be with the cool people anymore; you want to be with your people. • You realize that everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently. • You know that it's ok if you don't like jazz. Internationally best-selling author and New York Times contributor Pamela Druckerman leads us on a quest for wisdom, self-knowledge and the right pair of pants. A witty dispatch from the front lines of the forties, There Are No Grown-ups is a (midlife) coming-of-age story, and a book for anyone trying to find their place in the world.

"Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can't help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic." --Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club and The Art of Memoir From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom's most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the forty-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika's arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, "No one in Haiti can help you with." Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika's boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost. Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed--a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.

From the writer and director of "Knocked Up" and the producer of "Freaks and Geeks "comes a collection of intimate, hilarious conversations with the biggest names in comedy from the past thirty years--including Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Roseanne, Harold Ramis, Louis CK, Chris Rock, and Lena Dunham. Before becoming one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood, Judd Apatow was the original comedy nerd. At fifteen, he took a job washing dishes in a local comedy club--just so he could watch endless stand-up for free. At sixteen, he was hosting a show for his local high school radio station in Syosset, Long Island--a show that consisted of Q&As with his comedy heroes, from Garry Shandling to Jerry Seinfeld. They talked about their careers, the science of a good joke, and their dreams of future glory (turns out, Shandling was interested in having his own TV show one day and Steve Allen had already invented everything). Thirty years later, Apatow is still that same comedy nerd--and he's still interviewing funny people about why they do what they do. "Sick in the Head" gathers Apatow's most memorable and revealing conversations into one hilarious, wide-ranging, and incredibly candid collection that spans not only his career, but his entire adult life. Here are the comedy legends who inspired and shaped him, from Mel Brooks to Steve Martin. Here are the contemporaries he grew up with in Hollywood, from Spike Jonze to Sarah Silverman. And here, finally, are the brightest stars in comedy today, many of whom Apatow has been fortunate to work with, from Seth Rogen to Amy Schumer. And along the way, something kind of magical happens: What started as a lifetime's worth of conversations about comedy becomes something else entirely. It becomes an exploration of creativity, ambition, neediness, generosity, spirituality, and the joy that comes from making people laugh. Loaded with the kind of back-of-the-club stories that comics tell one another when no one else is watching, this fascinating, personal, and borderline-obsessive book is Judd Apatow's gift to comedy nerds everywhere.

From the razor-sharp mind of comedian Iliza Shlesinger comes a collection of hilarious and insightful essays about the exasperating issues of everyday life. All Things Aside is a punchy, honest, incisive book that shares a view of the world through the eyes of the inimitable Iliza Shlesinger. From the macro to micro, Shlesinger tackles it all with her no-bullshit comedic style. Throughout the book, Shlesinger dives from one subject into the next, making her hilarious asides the basis of her stories, much like she does in her stand-up comedy. Topics range from dissecting social expectations to the notion that products marketed specifically to women are scams, and all manner of things in between. She even dares to ask herself the all-important question that every woman is forced to consider at some point--Am I actually an annoying person? Shlesinger also shares intimate moments, including a devastating miscarriage, which she manages to navigate not only with grace but somehow with side-splitting humor. As Margaret Cho explains in the book's foreword, "Every woman has something to gain from the Everywoman Iliza presents in her hilarious and astute worldview...I've learned [from Iliza] that you don't have to quit when you are in pain, that you can write your way out of the suffering. That there is beautiful truth to be unearthed from the depths of despair. That the stupid can be smart and that we put ourselves through hell for nothing." All Things Aside offers unexpected insights, much-needed truths, and tons and tons of laughs.

"I wonder if Judy Blume really knows how many girls' lives she affected. I wonder if she knows that at least one of her books made a grown woman finally feel like she'd been a normal girl all along..." —from Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume Whether laughing to tears reading Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great or clamoring for more unmistakable "me too!" moments in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret , girls all over the world have been touched by Judy Blume's poignant coming-of-age stories. Now, in this anthology of essays, twenty-four notable female authors write straight from the heart about the unforgettable novels that left an indelible mark on their childhoods and still influence them today. After growing up from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing into Smart Women , these writers pay tribute, through their reflections and most cherished memories, to one of the most beloved authors of all time.

None of This Rocks is a memoir by Joe Trohman - lead guitarist and cofounder of Fall Out Boy - that reads like a double album full of revealing stories from his youth and his experiences of modern rock and roll stardom. With wit and wisdom, and maybe a little bit of whining, Trohman grapples with depression, his mother's brain cancer, antisemitism, pills, petty larceny, side hustles, and pop punk at the turn of the century. None of This Rocks chronicles a turbulent life that has informed Trohman's music and his worldview. His mother suffered from mental illness and multiple brain tumors that eventually killed her. His father struggled with that tragedy, but was ultimately a supportive force in Trohman's life who fostered his thirst for knowledge. Trohman faced antisemitism in small-town Ohio, and he witnessed all levels of misogyny, racism, and violence amid the straight edge hardcore punk scene in Chicago. Then came Fall Out Boy. From the guitarist's very first glimpses of their popular ascension, to working with his heroes like Anthrax's Scott Ian, to writing for television with comedian Brian Posehn, Trohman takes readers backstage, into the studio, and onto his couch. He shares his struggles with depression and substance abuse in a brutally honest and personal tone that readers will appreciate. Not much of this rocks, perhaps, but it all adds up to a fascinating music memoir unlike any you've ever read.

“Writing this funny requires immense talent.” — AV Club H. Jon Benjamin—the lead voice behind Archer and Bob's Burgers —helps us all feel a little better about our own failures by sharing his own in a hilarious memoir-ish chronicle of failure. Most people would consider H. Jon Benjamin a comedy show business success. But he'd like to remind everyone that as great as success can be, failure is also an option. And maybe the best option. In this book, he tells stories from his own life, from his early days ("wherein I'm unable to deliver a sizzling fajita") to his romantic life ("how I failed to quantify a threesome") to family ("wherein a trip to P.F. Chang's fractures a family") to career ("how I failed at launching a kid's show"). As Jon himself says, breaking down one's natural ability to succeed is not an easy task, but also not an insurmountable one. Society as we know it is, sadly, failure averse. But more acceptance of failure, as Jon sees it, will go a long way to making this world a different place . . . a kinder, gentler place, where gardens are overgrown and most people stay home with their pets. A vision of failure, but also a vision of freedom. With stories, examples of artistic and literary failure, and a powerful can't-do attitude, Failure Is an Option is the book the world doesn't need right now but will get regardless.

"One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death". So begins THE INVENTION OF SOLITUDE, Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. After the death of his own father, Auster discovers a 60-year-old family murder mystery that could account for the old man's elusive character. Later the book shifts from Auster's identity as son to his own role as father.

A ground-breaking work of nation building, this unique biographical book by many of English and French Canada's best-known writers and thinkers -- Margaret Atwood, Lucien Bouchard, Dr. Samantha Nutt, Ken Dryden, etc. -- tells the story of the extraordinary legacy of the French contribution to our very way of life. In 1913, schoolgirls found a heavy metal plaque peeking out of the soil in St-Pierre, South Dakota. On it they saw engraved characters and signs they could not decipher. They took the plaque back home, and somehow, it found its way into the hands of a local historian who immediately realized the importance of the artifact. One hundred and seventy years earlier, French-Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de la Vérendrye had written about his travels to the west in search of the elusive "Western Sea." In his journal, he remembered: "I placed upon a hillock near the fort a lead plaque with the arms and inscription of the King." That was the plaque found by the children, the proof that de la Vérendrye was the first white man to set eyes on the Rockies, 60 years before Lewis and Clark's famous expedition. Traces of the French-Canadians' contribution to North American history can be found in all regions of the continent. More often than not, we are unaware of or indifferent towards these signs. Yet the descendants of the French travelled farther than one would expect, exploring the land and a wide variety of fields of human activity (science, arts, economy, etc.). Through their audacity, their courage and their determination, they shaped Canada -- and, to a smaller but still significant extent -- the United States. In a unique partnership with Les Éditions La Presse, Legacy is the story of a dozen French-Canadian pioneers, from the era of Nouvelle-France up to the 20th century. This ambitious book project will take the form of a series of biographical essays written by Canadian personalities and leading authors. Through the lives of these extraordinary persons, the authors will reflect on the French-Canadian legacy. They are all convinced that Canada would not be what it is today were it not for these French-speaking Canadians who explored the land, hung on to their culture while respecting that of others, longed for peace, fought with courage, and stood up for a brand of humanism that helped shape the country we live in today.