A collection of more than fifty prose pieces by the cultural commentator reviews the literary achievements of her contemporaries, sharing perspectives on subjects ranging from the art of writing fiction to the continuing unequal state of race in America.

"Everything you need to know about collecting books, in one classic guide. Modern Book Collecting answers all the most important questions a book lover and collector might have{u2014}what to collect and where to find it, how to tell a first edition from a reprint, how to build an author collection, how to get the best price from dealers, how to understand the prices and rarity of books, and more. Robert A. Wilson reveals the world of collecting, focusing...

An author (a version of Vila-Matas himself) presents a short "history" of a secret society, the Shandies, who are obsessed with the concept of "portable literature." The society is entirely imagined, but in this rollicking, intellectually playful book, its members include writers and artists like Marcel Duchamp, Aleister Crowley, Witold Gombrowicz, Federico García Lorca, Man Ray, and Georgia O{u2019}Keefe. The Shandies meet secretly in apartments,...

"From the longest-running, most trusted book review in America comes a celebration of The New York Times Book Review, including reviews, essays, and interviews, showcasing the best, worst, funniest, strangest, and influential literary coverage since its beginnings in 1896"--

Discusses the works of Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, Rousseau, de Sade, Goethe, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, Huysmans, Emily Bronte, Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Whitman, Henry James, and Emily Dickinson.

In Contempt: Nineteenth-Century Women, Law, and Literature, by Kristin Kalsem, explores the legal advocacy performed by nineteenth-century women writers in publications of nonfiction and fiction, as well as in real-life courtrooms and in the legal forum provided by the novel form. The nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented reform in laws affecting married women's property, child support and custody, lunacy, divorce, birth control, domestic...

America's foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity...