Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - Between November 28, 2008 and December 28, 2009.

Shakespeare and Modern Culture by Marjorie Garber

2009-12-01T00:30:00-05:00

Shakespeare and Modern Culture
Written by Marjorie Garber

From one of the world's premier Shakespeare scholars comes a magisterial new study whose premise is "that Shakespeare makes modern culture and that modern culture makes Shakespeare."

Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as "naturally" true: ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and contemporary culture, from James Joyce's Ulysses to George W. Bush's reading list. From the persistence of difference in Othello to the matter of character in Hamlet to the untimeliness of youth in Romeo and Juliet, Garber discusses how these ideas have been re-imagined in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news, and in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law. Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a brilliant recasting of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of the protean Shakespeare.

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

2009-12-01T00:30:00-05:00

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James—one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction at work today—gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it.

P. D. James examines the genre from top to bottom, beginning with the mysteries at the hearts of such novels as Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and bringing us into the present with such writers as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell. Along the way she writes about Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie (“arch-breaker of rules”), Josephine Tey, Dashiell Hammett, and Peter Lovesey, among many others. She traces their lives into and out of their fiction, clarifies their individual styles, and gives us indelible portraits of the characters they’ve created, from Sherlock Holmes to Sara Paretsky’s sexually liberated female investigator, V. I. Warshawski. She compares British and American Golden Age mystery writing. She discusses detective fiction as social history, the stylistic components of the genre, her own process of writing, how critics have reacted over the years, and what she sees as a renewal of detective fiction—and of the detective hero—in recent years.

There is perhaps no one who could write about this enduring genre of storytelling with equal authority and flair: it is essential reading for every lover of detective fiction.

From the Hardcover edition.

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

2009-12-01T00:30:00-05:00

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

2009-11-11T00:30:00-05:00

Travels with Herodotus
Written by Ryszard Kapuscinski

From the renowned journalist comes this intimate account of his years in the field, traveling for the first time beyond the Iron Curtain to India, China, Ethiopia, and other exotic locales.

In the 1950s, Ryszard Kapuscinski finished university in Poland and became a foreign correspondent, hoping to go abroad – perhaps to Czechoslovakia. Instead, he was sent to India – the first stop on a decades-long tour of the world that took Kapuscinski from Iran to El Salvador, from Angola to Armenia. Revisiting his memories of traveling the globe with a copy of Herodotus' Histories in tow, Kapuscinski describes his awakening to the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of new environments, and how the words of the Greek historiographer helped shape his own view of an increasingly globalized world. Written with supreme eloquence and a constant eye to the global undercurrents that have shaped the last half-century, Travels with Herodotus is an exceptional chronicle of one man's journey across continents.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

This little book contains the wisdom of the ages, and is guaranteed to produce a smile of appreciation at the sheer sense of the proverbs you will find inside. From advice you wish your mother had given you, to things you probably suspected, but had never put into words, Lifelines is a book to be read, absorbed and treasured.—Pearl Cleage, New York Times best selling author of What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day

This illustrated treasury of proverbs unites the timeless wisdom of Black communities in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, while speaking to the triumphs and challenges of everyday life.

Lifelines: The Black book of Proverbs travels to all corners of the globe to reclaim and preserve African wisdom. This book offers the remarkably wise heart of Africa and her children to readers experiencing career changes, new births, weddings, death, and other rites of passage. Readers will find truth in the African saying, “When the occasion arises, there is a proverb to suit it.”

Proverbs are presented in vibrant story-poem form; and are uniquely arranged by key life cycle events such as birth, initiation, marriage, and death. The proverbs can be found under themes such as “wealth”, “parenting”, “change” and “strength.” Inspired illustrations introduce each section along with beautiful vignettes showing how African proverbs comfort, inspire and instruct during different phases of life.

Lifelines illuminates how traditions, civilization and spirit survive and thrive, despite centuries of loss of freedom, family, identity, language, land, and wealth. The proverbs offer wisdom for every stage of our lives. Collected in one place as never before, it is the perfect addition to the book shelves of families large and small, from Nairobi to New Orleans and every city in between.

From Birth:
Every cackling hen was an egg at first.
-Rwanda
to Marriage:

A woman's clothes are the price her husband pays for peace.
-Central Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa (Bantu)
and Elderhood:
Every time an old man dies it is as if a library has burnt down.
-West Africa

as well as every stage of life in between, the proverbs found in Lifelines offer the guidance and wisdom to last a life time.

Unlike other collections of proverbs, Lifelines hews closely to the cycle of life and draws inspiration from the authors combined 110 years of experience. Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers have set out to let their proverbs both tell a story and stand alone. So whether you flip it open to a random page, read it through from start to finish, or go searching for a proverb to match your unique circumstance, you’ll find just the right lifeline to provide the comfort and guidance you’re looking for.

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

A Truth Universally Acknowledged by Harold Bloom

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

A Truth Universally Acknowledged 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen
Edited by Susannah Carson
Foreword by Harold Bloom

For so many of us a Jane Austen novel is much more than the epitome of a great read. It is a delight and a solace, a challenge and a reward, and perhaps even an obsession. For two centuries Austen has enthralled readers. Few other authors can claim as many fans or as much devotion. So why are we so fascinated with her novels? What is it about her prose that has made Jane Austen so universally beloved?

In essays culled from the last one hundred years of criticism juxtaposed with new pieces by some of today’s most popular novelists and essayists, Jane Austen’s writing is examined and discussed, from her witty dialogue to the arc and sweep of her story lines. Great authors and literary critics of the past offer insights into the timelessness of her moral truths while highlighting the unique confines of the society in which she composed her novels. Virginia Woolf examines Austen’s maturation as an artist and speculates on how her writing would have changed if she’d lived twenty more years, while C. S. Lewis celebrates Austen’s mirthful, ironic take on traditional values.

Modern voices celebrate Austen’s amazing legacy with an equal amount of eloquence and enthusiasm. Fay Weldon reads Mansfield Park as an interpretation of Austen’s own struggle to be as “good” as Fanny Price. Anna Quindlen examines the enduring issues of social pressure and gender politics that make Pride and Prejudice as vital today as ever. Alain de Botton praises Mansfield Park for the way it turns Austen’s societal hierarchy on its head. Amy Bloom finds parallels between the world of Persuasion and Austen’s own life. And Amy Heckerling reveals how she transformed the characters of Emma into denizens of 1990s Beverly Hills for her comedy Clueless. From Harold Bloom to Martin Amis, Somerset Maugham to Jay McInerney, Eudora Welty to Margot Livesey, each writer here reflects on Austen’s place in both the literary canon and our cultural imagination.

We read, and then reread, our favorite Austen novels to connect with both her world and our own. Because, as A Truth Universally Acknowledged so eloquently demonstrates, the only thing better than reading a Jane Austen novel is finding in our own lives her humor, emotion, and love.

Yours Ever by Thomas Mallon

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

Yours Ever People and Their Letters
Written by Thomas Mallon

From the author of A Book of One’s Own and Stolen Words comes a delightful and wide-ranging investigation of the art of letter writing.

Yours Ever explores the offhand masterpieces dispatched through the ages by messenger, postal service, and BlackBerry. Thomas Mallon weaves a remarkable assortment of epistolary riches into his own insightful and eloquent commentary on the circumstances and characters of the world’s most intriguing letter writers. Here are Madame de Sévigné’s devastatingly sharp reports from the court of Louis XIV, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tormented advice to his young daughter, the besotted midlife billets-doux of a suddenly rejuvenated Woodrow Wilson, the casually brilliant spiritual musings of Flannery O’Connor, the lustful boastings of Lord Byron, the cries from prison of Sacco and Vanzetti. Along with the confessions and complaints and revelations sent from battlefields, frontier cabins, and luxury liners, a reader will find Mallon considering travel bulletins, suicide notes, fan letters, and hate mail–forms as varied as the human experiences behind them.

Yours Ever is an exuberant reintroduction to a vast and entertaining literature–a book that will help to revive, in the digital age, this glorious lost art.

Yours Ever by Thomas Mallon

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

Yours Ever People and Their Letters
Written by Thomas Mallon

Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino

2009-10-07T00:30:00-05:00

Why Read the Classics?
Written by Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here--spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism--are thirty-six immediately relevant, elegantly written, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.

Following the title essay, which explores fourteen definitions of "the classic," Calvino offers writings that are at once critical appraisals and personal appreciations of, among others: Homer, Xenophon, Ovid, Pliny, Nezami, Ariosto, Cardano, Galileo, Defoe, Voltaire, Diderot, Ortes, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Twain, Henry James, Stevenson, Conrad, Pasternak, Gadda, Montale, Hemingway, Ponge, Borges, and Queneau.

At a time when the Western canon and the very notion of "literary greatness" have come under increasing disparagement by the vanguard of so-called multiculturalism, Why Read the Classics? gives us an inspiriting corrective.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe

2009-10-06T00:30:00-05:00

The Education of a British-Protected Child Essays
Written by Chinua Achebe

From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart and winner of the Man Booker International Prize comes a new collection of autobiographical essays—his first new book in more than twenty years.

Chinua Achebe’s characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. In a preface, he discusses his historic visit to his Nigerian homeland on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, the story of his tragic car accident nearly twenty years ago, and the potent symbolism of President Obama’s election. In “The Education of a British-Protected Child,” Achebe gives us a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its “middle ground,” recalling both his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths of colonial rule. In “Spelling Our Proper Name,” Achebe considers the African-American diaspora, meeting and reading Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, and learning what it means not to know “from whence he came.” The complex politics and history of Africa figure in “What Is Nigeria to Me?,” “Africa’s Tarnished Name,” and “Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature.” And Achebe’s extraordinary family life comes into view in “My Dad and Me” and “My Daughters,” where we observe the effect of Christian missionaries on his father and witness the culture shock of raising “brown” children in America.

Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise, The Education of a British-Protected Child is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe

2009-10-06T00:30:00-05:00

The Education of a British-Protected Child Essays
Written by Chinua Achebe

Forever a Hustler's Wife by Bahni Turpin

2009-09-29T00:30:00-05:00

Forever a Hustler's Wife
Written by Nikki Turner
Read by Bahni Turpin

The high priestess of the hood, Nikki Turner, is back with the novel fans have been feenin’ for: the sequel to her #1 bestselling novel, A Hustler’s Wife.

Des, Virginia’s slickest gangsta, is about to become a dad when he is charged with the murder of his own attorney. But with Yarni, his gorgeous wife (and a brilliant lawyer), now calling the shots, Des isn’t going back to the slammer without a fierce fight. Even with the heat on, Des manages to take his game to the next level and finds a new hustle, one that will allow him to possess the three things all major players desire: money, power, and respect. He becomes a preacher. Reluctantly, Yarni stands by her man as he trades in his triple beam scale for a Bible and a Bentley and makes his Church of the Good Life Ministry a welcoming place for all sinners to step up to the altar.

But when Des’s nephew is killed in the high-stakes heroin trade and Des learns that someone close to him okayed the hit, the dyed-in-the-wool gangsta sets aside the Bible for the gospel of the streets–even if it means risking the one person who’s always had his back.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Travels in a Thin Country by Sara Wheeler

2009-09-23T00:30:00-05:00

Travels in a Thin Country A Journey Through Chile
Written by Sara Wheeler

Squeezed between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide--not a country that lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler discovered when she traveled alone from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Eloquent, astute, nimble with history and deftly amusing, Travels in a Thin Country established Sara Wheeler as one of the very best travel writers in the world.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time by Patrick Alexander

2009-09-22T00:30:00-05:00

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past
Written by Patrick Alexander

An accessible, irreverent guide to one of the most admired—and entertaining—novels of the past century. There is no other guide like this; a user-friendly and enticing entry into the marvelously enjoyable world of Proust.

At seven volumes, three thousand pages, and more than four hundred characters, as well as a towering reputation as a literary classic, Proust’s novel can seem daunting. But though begun a century ago, in 1909, it is in fact as engaging and relevant to our times as ever. Patrick Alexander is passionate about Proust’s genius and appeal—he calls the work “outrageously bawdy and extremely funny”—and in his guide he makes it more accessible to the general reader through detailed plot summaries, historical and cultural background, a guide to the fifty most important characters, maps, family trees, illustrations, and a brief biography of Proust. Essential for readers and book groups currently reading Proust and who want help keeping track of the huge cast and intricate plot, this Reader’s Guide is also a wonderful introduction for students and new readers and a memory-refresher for long-time fans.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time by Patrick Alexander

2009-09-22T00:30:00-05:00

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past
Written by Patrick Alexander

Life's Too F***ing Short by Janet Street-Porter

2009-09-15T00:30:00-05:00

Life's Too F*ing Short A Guide to Getting What You Want Out of Life Without Wasting Time, Effort, or Money
Written by** Janet Street-Porter

An irreverent, unapologetically opinionated, no-holds-barred manifesto for women who aim to thrive, not just survive, in the 21st century.

“Spend the first minute of every day telling yourself ‘I am bloody brilliant’–no one else is going to!” Janet Street-Porter proffers pithy pronouncements on everything from platform shoes to climbing the corporate ladder to spa vacations to designer face creams. Unimpressed by industry experts, independent research, and well-meaning but irrelevant journalists, Street-Porter dishes on the dictum that “more is never enough” (a ploy to get you to buy stuff you don’t need) and counters with been-there-done-that advice on career advancement (it’s not who you know), dating (it is who you know), interior décor (less is more), diet (less is still more), exercise (more is actually more), and personal ethics (if you don’t have any, it’s time to get some). So get a grip, because LIFE’S TOO F***ING SHORT to let it pass you by.

Beg, Borrow, Steal by Michael Greenberg

2009-09-08T00:30:00-05:00

Beg, Borrow, Steal A Writer's Life
Written by Michael Greenberg

In Beg, Borrow, Steal Michael Greenberg regales us with his wry and vivid take on the life of a writer of little means trying to practice his craft or simply stay alive. He finds himself doctoring doomed movie scripts; selling cosmetics from an ironing board in front of a women's department store; writing about golf, a game he has never played; and botching his debut as a waiter in a posh restaurant.

Central characters include Michael's father, whose prediction that Michael's "scribbling" wouldn't get him on the subway almost came true; his artistic first wife, whom he met in a Greenwich Village high school; and their son who grew up on the Lower East Side, fluent in the language of the street and in the language of the parlor. Then there are Greenberg's unexpected encounters: a Holocaust survivor who on his deathbed tries to leave Michael his fortune; a repentant communist who confesses his sins; a man who becomes a woman; a Chilean filmmaker in search of his past; and rats who behave like humans and cease to live underground.

Hilarious and bittersweet, Greenberg's stories invite us into a world where the familial, the literary, the tragic and the mundane not only speak to one another, but deeply enjoy the exchange.

Beg, Borrow, Steal by Michael Greenberg

2009-09-08T00:30:00-05:00

Beg, Borrow, Steal A Writer's Life
Written by Michael Greenberg

The Company They Kept by Barbara Epstein

2009-09-01T00:30:00-05:00

The Company They Kept Writers on Unforgettable Friendships
Edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein

Now in paperback

Many of the illustrious contributors to The New York Review of Books have had deep and abiding relationships–both personal and intellectual–with other poets, writers, artists, composers, and scientists of equal stature. The Company They Kept is a collection of twenty-seven accounts of these varied friendships–most of them undeniably fraught with “idiosyncratic complexities.” From Anna Akhmatova’s dreamlike description of wandering through Paris with the impoverished Modigliani to Joseph Brodsky’s account of his first meeting with Isaiah Berlin (from which he returned to report, around the kitchen table, to Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden), these pieces are tantalizing glimpses into the lives of those who have made The New York Review of Books into what Esquire magazine calls “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.”

Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - Between November 28, 2008 and December 28, 2009.

Shakespeare and Modern Culture by Marjorie Garber

Shakespeare and Modern Culture Written by Marjorie Garber

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction Written by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction Written by P. D. James

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Travels with Herodotus Written by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

Lifelines The Black Book of ProverbsWritten by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

Lifelines The Black Book of ProverbsWritten by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

A Truth Universally Acknowledged by Harold Bloom

A Truth Universally Acknowledged 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane AustenEdited by Susannah Carson Foreword by Harold Bloom

Yours Ever by Thomas Mallon

Yours Ever People and Their LettersWritten by Thomas Mallon

Yours Ever by Thomas Mallon

Yours Ever People and Their LettersWritten by Thomas Mallon

Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino

Why Read the Classics? Written by Italo Calvino

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe

The Education of a British-Protected Child EssaysWritten by Chinua Achebe

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe

The Education of a British-Protected Child EssaysWritten by Chinua Achebe

Forever a Hustler's Wife by Bahni Turpin

Forever a Hustler's Wife Written by Nikki Turner Read by Bahni Turpin

Travels in a Thin Country by Sara Wheeler

Travels in a Thin Country A Journey Through ChileWritten by Sara Wheeler

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time by Patrick Alexander

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things PastWritten by Patrick Alexander

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time by Patrick Alexander

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things PastWritten by Patrick Alexander

Life's Too F***ing Short by Janet Street-Porter

Life's Too F***ing Short A Guide to Getting What You Want Out of Life Without Wasting Time, Effort, or MoneyWritten by Janet Street-Porter

Beg, Borrow, Steal by Michael Greenberg

Beg, Borrow, Steal A Writer's LifeWritten by Michael Greenberg

Beg, Borrow, Steal by Michael Greenberg

Beg, Borrow, Steal A Writer's LifeWritten by Michael Greenberg

The Company They Kept by Barbara Epstein

The Company They Kept Writers on Unforgettable FriendshipsEdited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein

Shakespeare and Modern Culture
Written by Marjorie Garber

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

Travels with Herodotus
Written by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

A Truth Universally Acknowledged 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen
Edited by Susannah Carson
Foreword by Harold Bloom

Yours Ever People and Their Letters
Written by Thomas Mallon

Yours Ever People and Their Letters
Written by Thomas Mallon

Why Read the Classics?
Written by Italo Calvino

The Education of a British-Protected Child Essays
Written by Chinua Achebe

The Education of a British-Protected Child Essays
Written by Chinua Achebe

Forever a Hustler's Wife
Written by Nikki Turner
Read by Bahni Turpin

Travels in a Thin Country A Journey Through Chile
Written by Sara Wheeler

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past
Written by Patrick Alexander

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past
Written by Patrick Alexander

Life's Too F*ing Short A Guide to Getting What You Want Out of Life Without Wasting Time, Effort, or Money
Written by** Janet Street-Porter

Beg, Borrow, Steal A Writer's Life
Written by Michael Greenberg

Beg, Borrow, Steal A Writer's Life
Written by Michael Greenberg

The Company They Kept Writers on Unforgettable Friendships
Edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein