The Shape of a Pocket

Written by John Berger

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 11, 2003
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-71888-5 (0-375-71888-5)

“The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the New World Economic Order. The people coming together are the reader, me, and those the essays are about–Rembrandt, Paleolithic cave... Read more >

Family Circle
The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left
Written by Susan Braudy

Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: November 9, 2004
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7748-9 (1-4000-7748-6)

When Kathy Boudin was arrested in 1981 after a botched armed robbery and shootout that left a Brinks guard and two policemen dead, she ended a decade living underground as part of the radical Weathermen underground; she would spend the next 22 years in Bedford Hills prison. In Family Circle, Boudin’s... Read more >

The Physiology of Taste
or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy
Written by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Translated by M.F.K. Fisher

Format: Hardcover, 504 pages
Publisher: Everyman's Library
On Sale: October 6, 2009
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-26972-0 (0-307-26972-8)

A culinary classic on the joys of the table—written by the gourmand who so famously stated, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”—in a handsome new edition of M. F. K. Fisher’s distinguished translation and with a new introduction by Bill Buford.

First published in France... Read more >

Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall

Written by Sir Thomas Browne
Edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Ramie Targoff

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: August 7, 2012
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-488-3 (1-59017-488-7)

Sir Thomas Browne is one of the supreme stylists of the English language: a coiner of words and spinner of phrases of a near Shakespearean fecundity; the wielder of a weird and wonderful erudition; an inquiring spirit in the mold of Montaigne. Browne was an inspiration to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and... Read more >

Music for Chameleons

Written by Truman Capote

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 29, 1994
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-74566-2 (0-679-74566-1)

In these gems of reportage Truman Capote takes true stories and real people and renders then with the stylistic brio we expect from great fiction. Here we encounter an exquisitely preserved Creole aristocrat sipping absinthe in her Martinique salon; an enigmatic killer who sends his victims announcements of their forthcoming demise... Read more >

Portraits and Observations
The Essays of Truman Capote
Written by Truman Capote

Format: Trade Paperback, 528 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: November 11, 2008
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7891-9 (0-8129-7891-9)

Perhaps no twentieth-century writer was so observant and graceful a chronicler of his times as Truman Capote. Portraits and Observations is the first volume devoted solely to all the essays ever published by this most beloved of writers. Included are such masterpieces of narrative nonfiction as “The Muses Are Heard” and... Read more >

Decreation

Written by Anne Carson

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 10, 2006
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7890-5 (1-4000-7890-3)

In her first collection in five years, Anne Carson contemplates “decreation”—an activity described by Simone Weil as “undoing the creature in us”—an undoing of self. But how can we undo self without moving through self, to the very inside of its definition? Where else can we start?

Anne Carson’s Decreation starts with... Read more >

Living with Shakespeare
Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors
Written by Susannah Carson
Foreword by Harold Bloom

Format: Trade Paperback, 528 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 9, 2013
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-74291-9 (0-307-74291-1)

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites forty actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.

We hear from James Earl Jones on reclaiming Othello as a tragic... Read more >

Fires
Essays, Poems, Stories
Written by Raymond Carver

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 18, 1989
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-72239-7 (0-679-72239-4)

More than sixty stories, poems, and essays are included in this wide-ranging collection by the gifted and versatile Raymond Carver.

Essays include:
My Father's Life
On Writing
Fires
John Gardner: The Writer as Teacher

Poems include:
Drinking While Driving
Luck
Distress Sale
Bankruptcy
Alcohol
Looking For Work
You Don't Know What Love Is

Stories include:
Distance
The Lie
The Cabin
Harry's Death
The Pheasant
Where Is Everyone?
So Much Water So... Read more >

Room for Improvement
A Life in Sport
Written by John Casey

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 13, 2012
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-74452-4 (0-307-74452-3)

PEN/ESPN Award Finalist

Spanning more than fifty years of ambitious and wild endeavors, Room for Improvement chronicles John Casey's most peculiar addiction, that of an adrenaline junky. Here we see Casey taking part in an Outward Bound course in Maine during the dead of winter; being pinned by a two-hundred-pound judo instructor... Read more >

Room for Improvement
Notes on a Dozen Lifelong Sports
Written by John Casey

Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: November 8, 2011
Price: $25.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-70002-5 (0-307-70002-X)

From the author of the novel Spartina, which won the National Book Award and has established itself as a modern classic, comes a collection of essays that describe with tenderhearted candor and humor a lifetime’s worth of addiction. No, not an addiction to booze or drugs, but an addiction to a... Read more >

The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

Written by Willa Cather
Edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout

Format: Hardcover, 752 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: April 16, 2013
Price: $37.50
ISBN: 978-0-307-95930-0 (0-307-95930-9)

This first publication of the letters of one of America’s most consistently admired writers is both an exciting and a significant literary event. Willa Cather, wanting to be judged on her work alone, clearly forbade the publication of her letters in her will. But now, more than sixty-five years after her... Read more >

Lives of Moral Leadership
Men and Women Who Have Made a Difference
Written by Robert Coles

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: October 9, 2001
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-75835-5 (0-375-75835-6)

In this rich and illuminating book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author Robert Coles creates a portrait of moral leadership--what it is, and how it is achieved--through stories of people who have led and inspired him: Robert Kennedy, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Erik Erikson, a Boston bus driver, teachers in college, medical... Read more >

Daily Rituals
How Artists Work
Edited by Mason Currey

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: April 23, 2013
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27360-4 (0-307-27360-1)

Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through... Read more >

Mother Reader
Essential Writings on Motherhood
Edited by Moyra Davey

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
On Sale: May 1, 2001
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-58322-072-6 (1-58322-072-0)

The intersection of motherhood and creative life is explored in these writings on mothering that turn the spotlight from the child to the mother herself. Here, in memoirs, testimonials, diaries, essays, and fiction, mothers describe first-hand the changes brought to their lives by pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering.

Many of the writers articulate... Read more >

The Architecture of Happiness

Written by Alain De Botton

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 8, 2008
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-27724-4 (0-307-27724-0)

The Achitecture of Happiness is a dazzling and generously illustrated journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and the indelible connection between our identities and our locations.

One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs... Read more >

The Consolations of Philosophy

Written by Alain De Botton

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 3, 2001
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-77917-9 (0-679-77917-5)

Solace for the broken heart can be found in the words of Schopenhauer. The ancient Greek Epicurus has the wisest, and most affordable, solution to cash flow problems. A remedy for impotence lies in Montaigne. Seneca offers advice upon losing a job. And Nietzsche has shrewd counsel for everything from loneliness... Read more >

How Proust Can Change Your Life

Written by Alain De Botton

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 28, 1998
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-77915-5 (0-679-77915-9)

Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres—literary biography and self-help manual—in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life.

Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to... Read more >

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
Collected Nonfiction
Written by Joan Didion

Format: Hardcover, 1160 pages
Publisher: Everyman's Library
On Sale: October 17, 2006
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-26487-9 (0-307-26487-4)

Joan Didion’s incomparable and distinctive essays and journalism are admired for their acute, incisive observations and their spare, elegant style. Now the seven books of nonfiction that appeared between 1968 and 2003 have been brought together into one thrilling collection.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem captures the counterculture of the sixties, its mood and... Read more >

Where I Was From

Written by Joan Didion

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 14, 2004
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75286-8 (0-679-75286-2)

In this moving and unexpected book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history, and ours. Where I Was From, in Didion’s words, “represents an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up, confusions as much about America as about... Read more >

Where I Was From

Written by Joan Didion

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: September 23, 2003
Price: $23.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-43332-3 (0-679-43332-5)

In this moving and unexpected book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history, and ours. Where I Was From, in Didion’s words, “represents an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up, confusions as much about America as about... Read more >

For the Time Being

Written by Annie Dillard

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 8, 2000
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-70347-8 (0-375-70347-0)

Following a novel, a memoir, and a book of poems, Annie Dillard returns to a form of nonfiction she has made her own—now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Here is a natural history of sand, a catalogue of clouds, a batch of... Read more >

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
On Objects and Intimacy
Written by Mark Doty

Format: Trade Paperback, 80 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 19, 2002
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6609-6 (0-8070-6609-5)

Mark Doty’s prose has been hailed as “tempered and tough, sorrowing and serene” (The New York Times Book Review) and “achingly beautiful” (The Boston Globe). In Still Life with Oysters and Lemon he offers a stunning exploration of our attachment to ordinary things-how we invest objects with human store, and why.

“Books... Read more >

Meditations from a Movable Chair

Written by Andre Dubus

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 6, 1999
Price: $13.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75115-1 (0-679-75115-7)

For Andre Dubus, "the quotidian and the spiritual don't exist on different planes, but infuse each other. His is an unapologetically sacramental vision of life in which ordinary things participate in the miraculous, the miraculous in ordinary things. He believes in God, and talks to Him, and doesn't mince words. He... Read more >

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It

Written by Geoff Dyer

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 6, 2004
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3167-2 (1-4000-3167-2)

“A delightfully original book. . . . Dyer’s writing brims with offbeat insights that had me chuckling for hours later, or reading aloud to dinner companions.” —Tony Horowitz, The New York Times Book Review

“An irresistibly funny storyteller, [Dyer] is adept at fiction, essay, and reportage, but happiest when twisting all three... Read more >