Theroux's account of his 30-year friendship with the legendary V.S. Naipaul is an intimate record of a literary mentorship that traces the growth of both writers' careers and explores the unique effect each had on the other. It is also the story of how a friendship waxes and wanes between two men who have set themselves on the perilous journey of a writing life.

This is a book of tragicomic gurlesque word-witchery inspired by the Kate Bush cosmos. Campily glamorous, darkly funny, obsessively ekphrastic, boozily baroque, psychedelically girly & musically ecstatic, 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse dazzles as Karyna McGlynn's third collection. --from Amazon.

An "illustrated chain of entanglements (romantic and otherwise) between some of our best-loved writers and artists of the twentieth century ... from Frida Kahlo to Colette to Hemingway to Dali; from Coco Chanel to Stravinsky to Miles Davis to Orson Welles"--Back cover. "A vibrantly illustrated chain of entanglements (romantic and otherwise) between some of our best-loved writers and artists of the twentieth century--fascinating, scandalous, and surprising,"--Amazon.com....

"On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that "Nobody can read like a writer," Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay,...

"The gimmick lies latent in every made thing in capitalism, from the banana slicer to the cryptocurrency derivative to the readymade artwork that interprets itself. It includes both the painstakingly devised and the gratuitously disposable. It is what we call things when uncertain if they are over- or underperforming, if they are historically backward or just as problematically advanced, if they are wonders or tricks. With its promises about the saving...

"The Spartacus War is the extraordinary story of the most famous slave rebellion in the ancient world, the true story behind a legend that has been the inspiration for novelists, filmmakers, and revolutionaries for 2,000 years. Starting with only seventy-four men and growing to an army of 60,000, the gladiator Spartacus incited a rebellion that threatened Rome itself. A charismatic leader, Spartacus excelled in combat. He defeated nine Roman armies...

Sarah Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, to help explain the divisions ripping the United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and...