Showing titles in Art & Literature

More than three decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this original collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans, this volume brings together for the first time more than 50 of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces.

Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll.

Marie Colvin, described as "the greatest war correspondent of her generation", was killed in a rocket attack in February 2012 while reporting on the desperate suffering of civilians inside Syria's besieged Homs. Paul Conroy, who had forged a close bond with Colvin as they put their lives on the line time and time again to report from some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, was with her.

Known for his meaty seriocomic novels–expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow–Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life.

In Seeking Peace, Mary Pipher tells her own remarkable story, and in the process reveals truths about our search for happiness and love. While her story is unique, "the basic map and milestones of my story are universal," she writes. "We strive to make sense of our selves and our environments." In Seeking Peace, she recounts how she tried to achieve that.

Joining us at Audible Studios is Christopher Paolini, author of the Inhertiance Cycle series and the youngest author of a best-selling series for The New York Times, USA Today and Publishers Weekly. Paolini's newest book has been released: The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, from Tales of Alagaësia. Eragon has departed the world of Alagaësia in order to create a new home to train the next generation of dragon riders, to construct a dragonhold and protect dragon eggs; through these three original stories, we also see more of Eragon's personal journey.

Cathal Kelly grew up in the '70s and '80s, decades when dressing like Michael Jackson seemed like a good idea and The Beachcombers - "an adventure show about logging" - seemed to make sense. But apart from fashion missteps and baffling TV plot lines, Kelly's youth was a time of wonder, obsession, and discovery. Navigating an often fraught family life, Kelly sought refuge in books, music, movies, games, and at least one backyard hole.

Neil King Jr.’s desire to walk from Washington, D.C., to New York City began as a whim and soon became an obsession. By the spring of 2021, events had intervened that gave his desire greater urgency. His neighborhood still reeled from the January 6th insurrection. Covid lockdowns and a rancorous election had deepened America’s divides. Neil himself bore the imprints of a long battle with cancer.

Published in 1913, My Childhood is the first in an autobiographical trilogy by the Russian writer and five-time Nobel Prize-nominee Maxim Gorky. Painfully moving in places, the book tells of the experiences of a young boy who goes to live with his grandparents following the death of his father. Gorky’s depiction of 19th-century Russia through the eyes of his younger self is remarkable. As he recalls memories of his youth, contrasting themes and emotions are revealed, from barbaric joy to dark gloom, genuine cruelty and saint-like forbearance.

Vivienne Westwood is one of the icons of our age. Fashion designer, activist, cocreator of punk, global brand, and grandmother--a true living legend. Her career has successfully spanned five decades, and her work has influenced millions of people across the world. For the first and only time, Vivienne Westwood has written a personal memoir, collaborating with award-winning biographer Ian Kelly, to describe the events, people, and ideas that have shaped her extraordinary life.

Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor, conjuring up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, bestselling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time. But she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture; and what lies beneath her own glossy surface is darker, more mysterious, and far more intriguing.

Emma Donoghue discusses her extraordinary new novel with author Michael Cunningham ( The Hours and By Nightfall). This wondrous book is told from the point of view of a five-year-old boy who lives with his mother in an 11-by-11 foot room.

François Dompierre. Depuis toujours, cet homme singulier décline sa passion de la musique au pluriel: trames sonores, chansons, concertos, publicités, comédies musicales et plus encore. Mais Dompierre, c’est aussi douze années de radio et cinq années d’ateliers culinaires, trois livres et treize disques, des milliers de kilomètres à pied et un formidable appétit de vivre.

We all know that life in prison ain't grand, but the utter horror of it springs from the pages of this autobiography, written by a one-time death-row inmate. Billy Wayne Sinclair is now serving a reduced 90-year sentence for murdering a Baton Rouge convenience store owner in a robbery gone wrong more than three decades ago. His story of an adult life spent in one of Louisiana's harshest prisons is amazing, not only because he has survived with his soul intact, but because it provides such a raw look at the inner workings of a system bent on revenge, not rehabilitation.

English novelist Barbara Pym’s career was defined, in many senses, by rejection. Her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was turned down by every publisher she sent it out in 1935, finally published only 15 years later. Though she picked up a publisher from there and received modest praise, the publishing industry grew restless and her sales spiralled downwards. By her seventh novel, she had been dropped. This brilliant biography, brimming with Pym’s private diaries and intimate letters, offers a first full insight into Barbara Pym’s life and how it informed her writing.

When George McCullagh bought The Globe and The Mail and Empire and merged them into the Globe and Mail, the charismatic 31-year-old high school dropout had already made millions on the stock market. It was just the beginning of the meteoric rise of a man widely expected to one day be prime minister of Canada. But the charismatic McCullagh had a dark side. Dogged by the bipolar disorder that destroyed his political ambitions and eventually killed him, he was all but written out of history.

Aurora James’s life is a great American “success story”—precisely because it looks so different from others we’ve seen. Scouted as a teen model, James struggled with body image and became disenchanted by the industry’s objectification of women and commodification of race. After she’d hit rock bottom, dropping out of high school and being arrested for street racing, she was forced to reshape her life. A slew of fashion-related jobs led James to discover the power of the runway, and she started her own business in a flea market.

Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France.

Before Instagram was an art form, fashion photographers were pop culture royalty. From the postwar covers of Vogue until the triumph of the digital image, the fashion photographer sold not only clothes but ideals of beauty and fantasies of perfect lives. Even when they succumbed to temptation and excess, the very few photographers who rose to the top were artists above all.

Like millions of others, Louis Theroux’s plans were mothballed by the onset of COVID. Unable to escape to the porn sets and the prisons and the maximum-security mental hospitals that are his usual journalistic feeding ground, the garlanded documentary maker began reporting on a location even more full of pitfalls and hostile objects of inquiry - his own home during a pandemic.