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November 1925: In search of health and sun, the writer D. H. Lawrence arrives on the Italian Riviera with his wife, Frieda, and is exhilarated by the view of the sparkling Mediterranean from his rente

For decades, French writer, editor, and publisher Roger Grenier has been enticing readers with compact, erudite books that draw elegant connections between the art of living and the work of art. Under

In the spring of 2009, the University of Chicago Press published The Subversive Copyeditor, a slim volume packed with wryly witty commonsense advice for editors and authors on how to successfully mana

When Jessa Crispin was thirty, she burned her settled Chicago life to the ground and took off for Berlin with a pair of suitcases and no plan beyond leaving. Half a decade later, she’s still on the ro

The election of the next US president is upon us, and with established politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush poised to be key players, the campaigns seem destined to be as contentious, as u

Puckish and playful, Georges Perec infused avant-garde and experimental fiction with a wit and wonder that belied the serious concerns and concepts that underpinned it. A prominent member of the OuLiP

These engaging volumes were originally published in the 1920s, as part of a series which sought to help the middle classes acquire and perfect social decorum. Filled with timeless advice and charmin

In a book that draws on both personal stories and research presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of

1935, London: Anthony Powell is honing the edge of his humor on psychoanalysis and the film industry.Two young London charlatans, an amateur Freudian analyst and an bully with “connections with the fi

Before the end of the thirteenth century, theologians had little interest in demons, but with Thomas Aquinas and his formidable “Treatise on Evil” in 1272, everything changed. In Satan the Heretic, Al

In 2003 the Human Genome Project announced that it had achieved a stunning scientific breakthrough: the full map of the human genome, and with it our first complete picture of the basic building block

The puppet creates delight and fear. It may evoke the innocent play of childhood, or become a tool of ritual magic, able to negotiate with ghosts and gods. Puppets can be creepy things, secretive, ina

When viewed from a quiet beach, the ocean, with its rolling waves and vast expanse, can seem calm, even serene. But hidden beneath the sea’s waves are a staggering abundance and variety of active c

The adventures and challenges of Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew and a knight at the Round Table, including his duel with the mysterious Green Knight, are among the oldest and best known of Arthurian

The sixteenth Parker novel, Butcher’s Moon is more than twice as long most of the master heister’s adventures, and absolutely jammed with the action, violence, and nerve-jangling tension readers have

The personal stories of men and women who had acute polio and lived with its crippling consequences are chronicled in a history of the enduring physical and psychological experiences of the disease.

Arguably the most influential document in the history of urban planning, Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, coauthored by Edward Bennett and produced in collaboration with the Commercial Cl

The natural world is filled with diverse—not to mention quirky and odd—animal behaviors. Consider the male praying mantis that continues to mate after being beheaded; the spiders, insects, and birds t

Illinois Insects and Spiders celebrates the state's insect and spider populations with twenty-eight color plates of beautiful renderings of numerous species by artist Peggy Macnamara, each depicted t

In this novel about British expatriates on the eve of Indian independence, Paul Scott grapples with the themes of race, possession, and history that dominate all four novels of his masterpiece, The R

Bill Veeck was an inspired team builder, a consummate showman, and one of the greatest baseball men ever involved in the game. His classic autobiography, written with the talented sportswriter Ed Linn

"There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it." With this provocative and apparently paradoxical claim, Steven Shapin begins his bold vibrant exploration of the o

Charged by the Venetian Inquisition with the conscious and cynical feigning of holiness, Cecelia Ferrazzi (1609-1684) requested and obtained the unprecedented opportunity to defend herself through a p

In a work with profound implications for the electronic age, Ivan Illich explores how revolutions in technology affect the way we read and understand text.Examining the Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Vi

The poems in this, W. S. Di Piero's fifth collection of poetry, are animated by an ancient vision of the human state as existing somewhere between the divine and the bestial; tense with the compulsion

"The Truly Disadvantaged should spur critical thinking in many quarters about the causes and possible remedies for inner city poverty. As policy makers grapple with the problems of an enlarged underc

Howard Nemerov has written often about wars great and small, the overtly political and the deeply personal. But only with the passage of time, a heightening of technique and deepening of insight, has

In Educating for Virtue, five scholars address one of the most pressing issues of our time: the relationship between education and the development of moral character. With essays by Claes G. Ryn, Russ

The greatest of all epics, soon to be a film by Christopher Nolan! "This may be the best translation of The Odyssey yet."The Telegraph A magnificent feat of translation, hailed by classicists and poets alike as a "momentous achievement" "thrilling," "rich and rhythmical," "superb," "mesmerizing," "searingly faithful--yet absolutely original." With this edition of Homer's Odyssey, the celebrated author, critic, and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn brings the great epic to vividly poetic new life. Widely known for his essays on classical literature and culture in The New Yorker and many other publications, Mendelsohn gives us a line-for-line rendering of The Odyssey that is both engrossing as poetry and true to its source. Rejecting the streamlining and modernizing approach of many recent translations, he artfully reproduces the epic's formal qualities--meter, enjambment, alliteration, assonance--and in so doing restores to Homer's masterwork its archaic grandeur. Mendelsohn's expansive six

Longlisted for the 2024 Financial Times Book of the Year. How life and the economy became a black box--a collection of systems no one understands, producing outcomes no one likes. Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there's nothing we can do about it. The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world--lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations--these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable--a black box for no reason. In The Unaccountability Machine, Davies lays bar

An illuminating, in-depth look at competition in suburban high schools with growing numbers of Asian Americans, where white parents are determined to ensure that their children remain at the head of the class. The American suburb conjures an image of picturesque privilege: manicured lawns, quiet streets, and--most important to parents--high-quality schools. These elite enclaves are also historically white, allowing many white Americans to safeguard their privileges by using public schools to help their children enter top colleges. That's changing, however, as Asian American professionals increasingly move into wealthy suburban areas to give their kids that same leg up for their college applications and future careers. As Natasha Warikoo shows in Race at the Top, white and Asian parents alike will do anything to help their children get to the top of the achievement pile. She takes us into the affluent suburban East Coast school she calls "Woodcrest High," with a student body about one

Art today is often practiced in perfect conformity with the neoliberal zeitgeist, often even denying its own radical potential. What is Contemporary Art? lucidly examines the relationship between art

For decades we’ve been studying, experimenting with, and wrangling over different approaches to improving public education, and there’s still little consensus on what works, and wha

“I was suddenly struck with the sight of a trail of rich red vegetation of several miles in the midst of the eternal snows. I approached with curiosity this oasis in the frozen desert.” &#

To an outsider, working as a university professor might seem like a dream: summers off, a few hours of class each week, an exchange of ideas with brilliant colleagues, books and late afternoon lattes.

“Family history begins with missing persons,” Alison Light writes in Common People. We wonder about those we’ve lost, and those we never knew, about the long skein that led to us, and to here, and to

Sharp, resourceful, and with a style all her own, Althea Altemus embodied the spirit of the independent working woman of the Jazz Age. In her memoir,Big Bosses, she vividly recounts her life as a secr

In 2008, anthropologist Matti Bunzl was given rare access to observe the curatorial department of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. For five months, he sat with the institution’s staff, witnessing

A paragon of cinema criticism for decades, Roger Ebert—with his humor, sagacity, and no-nonsense thumb—achieved a renown unlikely ever to be equaled. His tireless commentary has been greatly missed si

On a business trip to Tunisia, Preising, a leading Swiss industrialist, is invited to spend the week with the daughter of a local gangster. He accompanies her to the wedding of two London city traders