An exhilarating volume that will ratchet up the joy for all reading groups“Wendy Lesser’s extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America’s most significant cultural
In this unusual memoir of the life of the mind, the founding editor of The Threepenny Review reflects upon the choices she has made in pursuit of her vocation as a self-described "eighteenth-century m
Writings on the author's favorite works of literature include discussions on such works as Anna Karenina, The Portrait of a Lady, Huckleberry Finn, Don Quixote, The Idiot, the young adult tale I Captu
The first biography of the iconic American architect that delves fully into his life and workBorn to a Jewish family in Estonia in 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up
“Wendy Lesser’s extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America’s most significant cultural critics,” writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, she draws on a lifetim
Most previous books about Dmitri Shostakovich have focused on either his symphonies and operas, or his relationship to the regime under which he lived, or both, since these large-scale works were the
Looks at the portrayal of women in art, photographs, motion pictures, and literature, and argues that male artists do not inevitably misrepresent women
A lively and inspired biography celebrating the centennial of this master choreographer, dancer, and stage director Jerome Robbins (1918–1998) was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz and grew up in We
Most previous books about Dmitri Shostakovich have focused on either his symphonies and operas, or his relationship to the regime under which he lived, or both, since these large-scale works were the
A deep dive into Scandinavian crime fiction and Scandinavian culture at largeFor forty years, Wendy Lesser’s primary source of information for three Scandinavian countries—Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—
A cultural critic raised as an atheist reflects on the meaning of her Jewish heritage and her "difficult friendship" with the writer Leonard Michaels, who continues to influence her life, even after h
"Wendy Lesser's You Say to Brick is easily the most complete narrative of Kahn's life and career, magnificently researched and gracefully written." —Inga Saffron, New York Times Book ReviewBorn in Est
Fifteen outstanding writers answered editor Wendy Lesser’s call for original essays on the subject of language–the one they grew up with, and the English in which they write.Despite American assumptio
Table Talk is a portable dinner party and a book to read alone while laughing out loud. Table Talk is a salon attended by your smartest friends and by all of the wittiest people they know. Table Talk
This original, intellectually ambitious, beautifully written meditation on 20th-century German history is viewed through the prism of one family's story. The story begins after World War I with Andrea
One of the most charming and memorable romantic comedies in American literature, William Dean Howells's Indian Summer tells of a season in the life of Theodore Colville. Colville, just turned forty,
