For more than four hundred years, the personal essay has been one of the richest and most vibrant of all literary forms. Distinguished from the detached formal essay by its friendly, conversational tone, its loose structure, and its drive toward candor and self-disclosure, the personal essay seizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities, fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal rituals, love and disappointment, the pleasures of solitude, reading, taking a walk -- to offer insight into the human condition and the great social and political issues of the day. The Art of the Personal Essay is the first anthology to celebrate this fertile genre. By presenting more than seventy-five personal essays, including influential forerunners from ancient Greece, Rome, and the Far East, masterpieces from the dawn of the personal essay in the sixteenth century, and a wealth of the finest personal essays from the last four centuries, editor Phillip Lopate, himself an acclaimed essayist, displays the tradition of the personal essay in all its historical grandeur, depth, and diversity.

An unprecedented glimpse into the formation of the legendary talent of Leonard Cohen. Before the celebrated late-career world tours, before the Grammy awards, before the chart-topping albums, before 'Hallelujah' and 'So Long, Marianne' and 'Famous Blue Raincoat', the young Leonard Cohen wrote poetry and fiction and yearned for literary stardom. [Bokinfo]

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating portrait of journalism and the people who make it, told through pieces collected from the incomparable six-decade career of bestselling author and longtime New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin “ The Lede contains profiles . . . that are acknowledged classics of the form and will be studied until A.I. makes hash out of all of us.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD I’ve been writing about the press almost as long as I’ve been in the game. At some point, it occurred to me that disparate pieces from various places in various styles amounted to a picture from multiple angles of what the press has been like over the years since I became a practitioner and an observer. Calvin Trillin has reported serious pieces across America for The New Yorker, covered the civil rights movement in the South for Time, and written comic verse for The Nation . But one of his favorite subjects over the years—a superb fit for his unique combination of reportage and humor—has been his own professional environment: the American press. In The Lede, Trillin gathers his incisive, often hilarious writing on reporting, reporters, and the media world that is their orbit. He writes about a legendary crime reporter in Miami, a swashbuckling New York Times reporter, and an erudite film critic in Dallas who once a week transformed himself from an appreciator of the French nouvelle vague into a crude connoisseur of movies like Mother Riley Meets the Vampire . There are pieces on the House of Lords aspirations of a North American press baron, the paucity of gossip columns in Russia, the embroilment of a weekly newspaper in a missing person case, and the founding of a publication called Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking . Uniting all of this is Trillin’s signature combination of empathy, humor, and graceful prose. The Lede is an unparalleled portrait of one of our fundamental American institutions from a master journalist.

This updated Agatha Christie compendium offers synopses of all Christie's novels, plays and short stories, without revealing whodunit. It also features: a portrait of Agatha Christie by Julian Symons; Christie's own comments on her work; articles on themes in her work such as a guide to Agatha's toxic agents, gossip and intuition as detective tools and the subtleties of the all-encompassing dress codes that governed her characters; articles on films, plus an updated filmography and new-video listing; a behind-the-scenes look at "Agatha" the movie; a mystery map showing locations of stories; a Christie crossword; and coverage of her romantic writing under the pen name Mary Westmacott.--From publisher description.

Robin Lakoff gets to the heart of one of the most fascinating and pressing issues in American society today: who holds power and how they use it, keep it, or lose it. In a brilliant and vastly entertaining discussion of news events that have occupied an enormous amount of media space--political correctness, the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, Hillary Rodham Clinton as First Lady, O. J. Simpson's murder trial, the Ebonics controversy, and the Clinton sex scandal--Lakoff shows that the struggle for power and status at the end of the century is being played out as a war over language. Controlling language is a basis for all power, she says, and therefore it is worth fighting for. As a result, newly emergent groups, especially blacks and women, are contending with middle- to upper-class white men for a share in "language rights." Lakoff's introduction to linguistic theories and the philosophy of language lays the groundwork for an exploration of news stories that meet what she calls the UAT (Undue Attention Test). As the stories became the subject of talk-show debates, late-night comedy routines, Web sites, and magazine articles, they were embroidered with additional meanings, depending on who was telling the story. Race, gender, or both are at the heart of these stories, and each one is about the right to construct meanings from languagein short, to possess power. Because language tells us how we are connected to one another, who has power and who does not, the stories reflect the language war. We use language to analyze what we call "reality," the author argues, but we mistrust how language is used today--witness the "politics of personal destruction" following the Clinton impeachment. Yet Lakoff sees in the struggle over language a positive goal: equality in the creation of our national discourse. Her writing is accessible and witty, and her excerpts from the media are used to great effect.

Excerpt from the Introduction: For a long time we declined the invitation of Messrs. Biblo and Tannen to reissue The Detective Short Story: A Bibliography. The book originally appeared in 1942, and since then nothing has been changed in the book, nothing subtracted, nothing added. Of what earthly use, we asked Messrs. B and T, is a bibliography that has been out of date for 27 years? Mssrs. B and T insisted that the book was a milestone in its field, that copies of the original (and only) edition were virtually unobtainable, that many collectors, readers, libraries, booksellers, and even some critics, wanted the book however long it has been out of date – in short, that this unique work should be rescued from biblivion. So we agreed to its reissue in this handsome offset edition. From the moment the original edition went to press in 1942 we foresaw the possible desirability of future revised and updated editions. So we began to collect notes on newly published volumes of detective-crime-mystery short stories, on corrections of errors (oh, yes, there were some) in the 1942 edition, and on newly discovered titles published before 1942. Ellery Queen

The struggle to write with deep emotion is the subject of this extraordinary book, the previously unpublished credo of one of America's greatest 20th-century writers. "You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich," writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: "A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery." Nonconformity is about 20th-century America: "Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder." And it is about the trouble writers ask for when they try to describe America: "Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards . . . [where there] are still . . . defeats in which everything is lost [and] victories that fall close enough to the heart to afford living hope." In Nonconformity, Algren identifies the essential nature of the writer's relation to society, drawing examples from Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Twain, and Fitzgerald, as well as utility infielder Leo Durocher and legendary barkeep Martin Dooley. He shares his deepest beliefs about the state of literature and its role in society, along the way painting a chilling portrait of the early 1950s, Joe McCarthy's heyday, when many American writers were blacklisted and ruined for saying similar things to what Algren is saying here.

"[His] way with the familiar essay--that flexible, forgiving genre in which anything goes except charmlessness and anonymity--has much in common with that of Messrs, Beerbohm, Liebling, and Mencken. Each piece is exquisitely sustained, moving from point to point with the relaxed economy of a pro." --Wall Street Journal

Space and Time magazine #148 offers an immersive journey into the captivating world of speculative fiction, poetry, and visionary artwork. Explore extraordinary narratives across the intriguing genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, each expertly crafted to push boundaries and spark your imagination. Discover chilling tales that stay with you, mesmerizing poetry that blurs reality, and evocative artwork designed to stimulate creative thought. Ideal for fans of speculative literature seeking fresh and compelling stories, Space and Time #148 is a must-have addition to your collection. Unlock endless adventures and unforgettable experiences today. Includes work from Linda D. Addison, Danny Robb, JJ de Melo, Sarah Walker, Lesley Hart Gunn, R Mac Jones, Larina Warnock, John C. Mannone, Adan Jerreat-Poole, Angela Yuriko Smith, Corey Niles, Valerie B. Williams, Mark A. Fisher, C.S. Magnuson, Richard Dansky, Matthew Roy, Frances Lu Pai Ippolito, Michael Getty, Nancy Taylor, Scot Noel, Darius Jones, Osmani Alcaraz-Ochoa, Scott J. Couturier, A J Dalton, Daniel M. Kimmel, Lee Murray, Sara Castaneda, Mark Guyer, Mark Dougherty, Nikki Dekeuster, Anthony R. Rhodes, Douglas Draper, Arthur Haywood, Thomas Nackid, Brad W. Foster, Mark Lavine, Al Sirois, Alfred Klosterman, Shikar Dixit and Anthony R. Rhodes. Interior design by Anthony R. Rhodes. Cover art from Arthur Haywood. Special thanks goes to the Space and Time Team that helped to bring this together: EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Angela Yuriko Smith, MANAGING EDITOR Ken Hueler, EDITOR FICTION EDITOR Gerard Houarner, POETRY EDITOR Linda D. Addison, ART EDITOR Diane Weinstein, TRANSLATIONS Luiz F. Peters, EDITORS EMERITUS Gordon Linzner and Hildy Silverman, FEATURE WRITERS Linda D. Addison, Daniel M. Kimmel, and Michael Wyatt, EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Kyra Starr, J.W. Donley and Nikki DeKeuster.