NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and contemporary artists but dislike the artist? "A lively, personal exploration of how one might think about the art of those who do bad things" —Vanity Fair “Monsters leaves us with Dederer’s passionate commitment to the artists whose work most matters to her, and a framework to address these questions about the artists who matter most to us." —The Washington Post "[Dederer] breaks new ground, making a complex cultural conversation feel brand new." —Ada Calhoun, author of Also a Poet From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, Monsters is “part memoir, part treatise, and all treat” (The New York Times). This unflinching, deeply personal book expands on Claire Dederer’s instantly viral Paris Review essay, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?" Can we love the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski, or Picasso? Should we? Dederer explores the audience's relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss? Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.

A beautiful picture book about hope, change and the passing of time. Winner of the Caldecott Medal 2019.On the highest rock of a tiny island at the edge of the world stands a lighthouse. From dusk to dawn, the lighthouse beams, sending its light out to sea, guiding the ships on their way. As the seasons pass and the waves rise and fall, outside, the wind blows; inside, the lighthouse keeper writes, and the rhythms of his life unfold. But change is on the horizon...With beautiful illustrations from Sophie Blackall - the artist behind New York Times bestseller, Finding Winnie."I will be surprised if a more exquisite picture book is published this year" - New York Times"A jewel of a creation" - Publishers Weekly

Lighthouse is packed with extraordinary stories of human innovation, desperate shipwrecks, builders defying the elements and heroic sea rescues. Through more than 350 gorgeous vintage images and historic details, Lighthouse brings the golden age of seafaring alive. With rare archival blueprints and stories of daring adventure, Lighthouse captures the romance and awe-inspiring history of these isolated, life-saving towers, along with the incredible feats of engineering and invention it took to create them. Beginning in the 18th century and ending in the mid-19th century, this book examines these iconic buildings from every angle, chronicling the evolution of lighthouse design; the tremendous obstacles overcome during construction and upkeep; the thrilling tales of heroism and mercilessness of the seas; and the daily lives of the dedicated and often long-suffering keepers. With over 350 illustrations, this seasonless gift book provides the tales and original architectural plans for beloved lighthouses found throughout the world, including Eddystone, Sandy Hook, Montauk Point, Stannard Rock, Borkum Grosser, Green Point, Tillamook Rock, Cape Hatteras, Erie Harbor, and many more.

In his follow-up to Lunatic Heroes, Martignetti sheds all defenses to reveal the viscera of a mind shaped by the dark and confusing forces of his childhood. This collection of memoirs and essays focuses mainly on Martignetti's adult years, and features the pivotal characters of his ever-entertaining personal narrative. From the cascade of memories and emotions triggered by an accidental butterfly killing in "Cocoon Talk," to the homicidal impulses prompted by a visit to his boyhood home in "Sign," from the heartbreaking to the hilarious musings inspired by beloved pets in "Mochajava" and "Dog," and throughout the uncensored sexcapades of "Mad," "The Wild," and "Feast of the Hungry Ghost," Martignetti's colloquial, humorous, and intimate style will keep you riveted, crack you open, enthrall and embrace you with an honesty normally reserved for not even the closest of friends.

""The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.""So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they "dream on" in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of "A Widow for One Year" and "The Cider House Rules,"

Listen to the brand new dramatisation of How To Be a Woman, narrated by Caitlin herself, as part of BBC Radio 4's Riot Girls season Selected by Emma Watson for her feminist book club ‘Our Shared Shelf’It's a good time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven't been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain... Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask you when you're going to have a baby? Part memoir, part rant, Caitlin answers the questions that every modern woman is asking.

Here is the inimitable Zen Master Seung Sahn up close and personal—in selections from the correspondence that was one of his primary modes of teaching. Seung Sahn received hundreds of letters per month, each of which he answered personally, and some of the best of which are included here. His frank and funny style, familiar to readers of Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, is seen here in a most intimate form. The beloved Zen master not only answers questions on Zen teaching and practice, but applies an enlightened approach to problems with work, relationships, suffering, and the teacher-student relationship.

I can think of few writers who can make the ordinary collide with the extraordinary to such beguiling effect...left me so fizzing with admiration' ObserverA stunning collection of short stories by the three-times Costa prizewinner Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality.From Charlene and Trudi, obsessively making lists while bombs explode softly in the streets outside, to gormless Eddie, maniacal cataloguer of fish, and Meredith Zane who may just have discovered the secret to eternal life, each of these stories shows that when the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible.

Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy uses a seemingly infinite array of purely natural materials, from snow and ice to leaves, stone, and twigs in the creation of his one-of-a-kind sculptures. Unlike such artists as Christo and Michael Hiezer, whose works leave definite marks on the landscape, Goldsworthy's approach is to interrupt, shape, or in some other way temporarily alter or work with nature to produce his fragile, mutable pieces. To create "Broken Icicle," for example, Goldsworthy was only able to work on the sculpture in the early morning, when temperatures were below freezing. As with most of his works, ultimately, the materials used to create this piece returned to their natural state, leaving no trace of the artwork's existence save for the stunning photos in this book.

This seductive sourcebook of rare visual delights from pre-Nazi, Cabaret-period “Babylon on the Spree” has the distinction of being praised both by scholars and avatars of contemporary culture, inspiring hip club goers, filmmakers, gay historians, graphic designers, and musicians like the Dresden Dolls and Marilyn Manson.This expanded edition includes “Sex Magic and the Occult,” documenting German pagan cults and their often-bizarre erotic rituals, including instructions for entering into the “Sexual Fourth Dimension.”Mel Gordon is professor of theater at the University of California, Berkeley, and is also the author of Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant (Feral House).

An enduring collection of revolutionary comics from a genre-transforming and critically acclaimed cartoonist Julie Doucet arrived in comics in the 1990s as a fully formed cartoonist. Her comic book series Dirty Plotte was visionary both for the medium and for storytelling. Her stories are candid, funny and intimate, plumbing the depths of the female psyche while charting the fragility of the men around her. Her artwork is dense and confident, never wavering in the wit and humour of its owner. Doucet was active in comics for fifteen years before she moved on to other mediums. Her influence casts a long shadow over the medium, Dirty Plotte is quite simply one of the most iconic comic book series to have ever been created. Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet collects the entire comic book series, including the acclaimed My New York Diary, as well as rare comics and previously unpublished material; a reproduction of the first Dirty Plotte mini comic; essays about her comics legacy and feminist influence by curator Dan Nadel and academic Martine Delvaux respectively; an interview by comics scholar Christian Gasser; and personal anecdotes from Jami Attenberg, Adrian Tomine, and more. Doucet uses the covers of this two-book box set to present an all-new comic that explores her complicated relationship with femininity and the importance of her relationships with female readers. Astonishingly honest, brutal, and funny, Dirty Plotte is a revelatory journey into a legendary cartoonist's oeuvre.

Janey undergoes, as if in a fairytale, a nightmare journey of exploitation - first incest, then abortions, a job selling cookies to the chi-chi bourgois of Brooklyn, a one-sided love affair with the leader of punk gang THE SCORPIONS, and finally is sold into the white slave trade in the middle east. Along the way she grapples with the cultural message of The Scarlet Letter, falls in love with Jean Genet, and angrily ridicules Erica Jong - the famous rich white face of 1970s feminism. Pulsating with the influence of William S. Burroughs, the narrative is a patchwork mish-mash of prose, poetry, drama, literary plagiarism and illustration - childlike sexual drawings pepper the book, along with Acker's surreal, minutely detailed, annotated 'dream maps'. Exploring feminism, punk, the idea of the "literary canon" and the United States of America, Blood and Guts in High School has lost none of its power to shock.

"What is REAL?" a shy stuffed animal asks an older and wiser plaything. Generations of children have found the answer to that vital question in The Velveteen Rabbit: Or, How Toys Become Real, the timeless story of a toy's transformation through the power of love. This gift edition of Margery Williams's beloved classic features enchanting color illustrations by William Nicholson from the original 1922 publication.

Die Geschichte einer amerikanischen Familie, die mehr oder weniger erfolgreich ein Hotel betreibt und später in Wien einen Neuanfang versucht. Ein zeitkritisches Panoptikum voller Witz und Skurrilität. - Einer der erfolgreichsten Romane von John Irving.

This revolutionary translation is the only way to experience the novel as Hesse envisioned it nearly one hundred years ago. The quest for self-discovery never ends, especially for Harry Haller—better known as the Steppenwolf. After a life spent in self-imposed isolation, Harry meets the mysterious Hermine and becomes captivated by her intoxicating power. Through their nighttime adventures, the Steppenwolf experiences the decadent underbelly of the bourgeois society he always despised. Harry becomes a man divided—lost in a surreal underground world of pleasure and set on a collision course with his innermost desires. There has never been a translation that fully captures the essence of Hermann Hesse’s own spiritual questioning until now. Kurt Beals restores the original meaning of this hallucinatory German tale in a recognizably modern voice. Beals’s expert introduction traces the impact of The Steppenwolf for readers seeking meaning during the upheaval of world conflicts, the onslaught of new technologies, and life’s uncertainties.

An in-depth guide to prepare your family for the widespread outbreak of any deadly disease like COVID-19 or H1N1.New viruses hop around the globe every year. In 2009–2010, it was H1N1 that infected over sixty million people around the globe. In 2014, Ebola virus had a terrifying 40% mortality rate. In 2020, COVID-19 exploded into a world-wide pandemic despite the best efforts of governments and health organizations.So, what will happen when a pathogen as easily transmitted as coronavirus and as deadly as Ebola emerges?Prepping for a Pandemic provides all the information you need for medical self-reliance. It’s step-by-step guidance covers every important issue, including stocking food, storing water, developing contingency plans, learning first aid and nursing skills, and establishing quarantines and sick rooms. With checklists, tips, and plans, this book outlines the necessary supplies and skills one will need to stay healthy when doctors, hospitals, and the world’s medical infrastructure become overwhelmed or unavailable during a pandemic outbreak.

A deep exploration of the regenerative and magical secrets of sacred masculinity hidden in familiar myths both ancient and modern• Reveals the restorative fungi archetype of Osiris, the Orphic mysteries as an underground mycelium linking forests and people, how Dionysus teaches us about invasive species and playful sexuality, and the ecology of Jesus as depicted in his nature-focused parables• Liberates Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell’s hero’s journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledgeLong before the sword-wielding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were playful gods, animal-headed kings, mischievous lovers, trickster harpists, and vegetal magicians with flowering wands. As eco-feminist scholar Sophie Strand discovered, these wilder, more magical modes of the masculine have always been hidden in plain sight. Sharing the culmination of eight years of research into myth, folklore, and the history of religion, Strand leads us back into the forgotten landscapes and hidden secrets of familiar myths, revealing the beautiful range of the divine masculine, including expressions of male friendship, male intimacy, and male creative collaboration. In discussing Dionysus and Osiris, Strand encourages us to think like an ecosystem instead of like an individual. She connects dying, vegetal gods to the virtuous cycle of composting and decay, highlighting the ways in which mushrooms can restore soil and heal polluted landscapes. Exploring esoteric Christianity, the author celebrates the Gnostic Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas, imagining the ecology that the Rabbi Yeshua would have actually been referencing in his nature-focused parables. Strand frees Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell’s hero’s journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledge. Strand reseeds our minds with new visions of male identity and shows how each of us, regardless of gender, can develop a matured ecological empathy and witness a blossoming of sacred masculine powers that are soft, curious, connective, and celebratory.

A New Translation From The French By Marion WieselNight is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

You were either fit and trim or you weren't working hard enough. Your body was how you conveyed wealth and status to your peers, it was a personality trait, a symbol of goodness and values: an ethical ideal. In recent decades women have made momentous progress fighting the patriarchy, yet they are held to ever-stricter, more punishing physical standards. Self-worth still plummets and eating disorders are more deadly for how easily they are dismissed. In Beauty , Bri Lee explores our obsession with thinness and asks how an intrinsically unattainable standard of physical 'perfection' has become so crucial to so many. What happens if you try to reach that impossible goal? Bri did try, and Beauty is what she learned from that battle: a gripping and intelligent rejection of an ideal that diminishes us all.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"An astounding triumph . . . Profound . . . Achingly wise . . . A recovery memoir like no other." --Entertainment Weekly (A)"Riveting . . . Beautifully told." --Boston Globe"An honest and important book . . . Vivid writing and required reading." --Stephen King"Perceptive and generous-hearted . . . Uncompromising . . . Jamison is a writer of exacting grace." --Washington PostFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams comes this transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction.With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction--both her own and others'--and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need." It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience-the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are. For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.

HOW DO YOU BEAT THE BULLIES AND THE BIGOTS? HERE'S HOW.The heart-breaking, inspirational (and very funny) story of the man who overcame so much, and won a very special place in a nation's heart.'A proper delight to read: honest, revealing, human, and always, at its heart, funny.' NEIL GAIMAN***In his long-awaited autobiography, Sir Lenny Henry tells the extraordinary story of his early years and sudden rise to fame. Born soon after his Jamaican parents had arrived in the Midlands, Lenny was raised as one of seven siblings in a boisterous working household, and sent out into the world with his mum's mantra of 'H'integration! H'integration! H'integration!' echoing in his ears. But 1970s Britain was a hard place, and a bewildering experience for a lone black teenager. A natural ability to make people laugh came in handy. At school it helped subdue the daily racist bullying. In the park, it led to lifelong friendships and occasional snogs. Soon, it would put him on stage at working men's clubs and Black Country discotheques -before an invitation to a TV audition changed his life for ever.***BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week***

Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. Will future generations distinguish between those who didn’t believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response?In We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way. The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves—with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat—and don’t eat—for breakfast.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller listFrom the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).