James Wood

"In the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power. Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional character? What constitutes...

In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches--which range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, Edmund Wilson, and Mikhail Lermontov--literary critic James Wood offers a panoramic look at the modern novel. He effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, and Aleksandar...

Ever since the publication of his first essay collection, The Broken Estate, in 1999, James Wood has been widely regarded as a leading literary critic of the English-speaking world. His essays on canonical writers (Gustav Flaubert, Herman Melville), recent legends (Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson) and significant contemporaries (Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante) have established a standard for informed and incisive appreciation, composed in a distinctive...

While largely unknown today, Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen was the leading prose writer in Scandinavia in the late nineteenth century. Despite his untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-eight, Jacobsen became a cult figure to an entire generation and continues to occupy an important place in Scandinavian cultural history. In this book, Morten Høi Jensen gives a moving account of Jacobsen's life, work, and death.--Adapted from...

"If you're struggling to keep your projects organized, this book is for you. If your team is unable to meet your deadlines, this book is for you. And if you're consistently managing projects despite having no project management training, this book is definitely for you. You're not alone--in fact, your situation is quickly becoming the norm"--

Reveals who the United States founding fathers were, discussing their roles in founding the nation, but also who they were outside of politics and government.

When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called Videodrome. As he struggles to unearth the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation.

"In the mid-1970s, in a sleepy Michigan community, live the Lisbon sisters, five teenagers whose beauty has bewitched a group of neighborhood boys. Isolated by their over-protective parents, they move like fleeting visions against the suburban landscape, luminous and unattainable. But when school hunk Trip Fontaine convinces Lux Lisbon and her sisters to go to the prom, the boys' romantic fantasies threaten to come true - until they are engulfed in...

Taken from the gods as a newborn and adopted on earth, Hercules is just an awkward pillar of strength trying to fit in. What he wants most is to impress his father Zeus. When Hercules discovers Hades' sinister plot to take over Mount Olympus, he goes from zero to hero and, with the help of his pals Pegasus and Phil, discovers that real strength comes from the heart!