The First World War comes to harrowing life through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets in Michael Korda’s epic Muse of Fire.

Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Hero and Alone, tells the story of the First World War not in any conventional way but through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets who came to describe it best, and indeed to symbolize the war’s tragic arc and lethal fury.

His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, “the handsomest young man in England” and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice. With bitter irony, Owen’s mother received the telegram informing her of his death on November 11, just as church bells tolled to celebrate the war’s end.

Korda’s dramatic account, which includes anecdotes from his own family history, not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation. His cast of characters includes the young American poet Alan Seeger, who was killed in action as a private in the French Foreign Legion; Isaac Rosenberg, whose parents had fled czarist anti-Semitic persecution and who was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight before his fame as a poet and a painter was recognized; Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, whose friendship and friendly rivalry endured through long, complicated private lives; and, finally, Owen, whose fame came only posthumously and whose poetry remains some of the most savage and heartbreaking to emerge from the cataclysmic war.

As Korda demonstrates, the poets of the First World War were soldiers, heroes, martyrs, victims, their lives and loves endlessly fascinating—that of Rupert Brooke alone reads like a novel, with his journey to Polynesia in pursuit of a life like Gauguin’s and some of his finest poetry written only a year before his tragic death. Muse of Fire is at once a portrait of their lives and a narrative of a civilization destroying itself, among the rubble, shadows, and the unresolved problems of which we still live, from the revival of brutal trench warfare in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

“Anne Lamott is my Oprah.” —Chicago Tribune

From the bestselling author of Dusk, Night, Dawn and Help, Thanks, Wow, a joyful celebration of love

“Love is our only hope,” Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book. “It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.”

In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. “Love just won't be pinned down,” she says. “It is in our very atmosphere” and lies at the heart of who we are. We are, Lamott says, creatures of love.

In each chapter of Somehow, Lamott refracts all the colors of the spectrum. She explores the unexpected love for a partner later in life. The bruised (and bruising) love for a child who disappoints, even frightens. The sustaining love among a group of sinners, for a community in transition, in the wider world. The lessons she underscores are that love enlightens as it educates, comforts as it energizes, sustains as it surprises. 

Somehow is Anne Lamott’s twentieth book, and in it she draws from her own life and experience to delineate the intimate and elemental ways that love buttresses us in the face of despair as it galvanizes us to believe that tomorrow will be better than today. Full of the compassion and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Somehow is classic Anne Lamott: funny, warm, and wise.

A deeply transformative memoir that reframes how we think about death and how it can help us lead better, more fulfilling and authentic lives, from America's most visible death doula.

"A truly unique, inspiring perspective on the time we have, what we do with it, and how we let go of this world.... There is no one I'd trust more to guide me through an understanding of death, and how it informs life." -- Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Mad Honey and The Book of Two Ways

"Briefly Perfectly Human is a beautiful, raw, light-bringing experience. Alua's voice is shimmering, singular, and pulses with humor, vulnerability, insight, and refreshing candor.... Be prepared for it to grab you, hold you tight, and raise the roof on the power of human connection." -- Tembi Locke, author of From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

For her clients and everyone who has been inspired by her humanity, Alua Arthur is a friend at the end of the world. As our country's leading death doula, she's spreading a transformative message: thinking about your death--whether imminent or not--will breathe wild, new potential into your life.

Warm, generous, and funny AF, Alua supports and helps manage end-of-life care on many levels. The business matters, medical directives, memorial planning; but also honoring the quiet moments, when monitors are beeping and loved ones have stepped out to get some air--or maybe not shown up at all--and her clients become deeply contemplative and want to talk. Aching, unfinished business often emerges. Alua has been present for thousands of these sacred moments--when regrets, fears, secret joys, hidden affairs, and dim realities are finally said aloud. When this happens, Alua focuses her attention at the pulsing center of her clients' anguish and creates space for them, and sometimes their loved ones, to find peace.

This has had a profound effect on Alua, who was already no stranger to death's periphery. Her family fled a murderous coup d'état in Ghana in the 1980s. She has suffered major, debilitating depressions. And her dear friend and brother-in-law died of lymphoma. Advocating for him in his final months is what led Alua to her life's calling. She knows firsthand the power of bearing witness and telling the truth about life's painful complexities, because they do not disappear when you look the other way. They wait for you.

Briefly Perfectly Human is a life-changing, soul-gathering debut, by a writer whose empathy, tenderness, and wisdom shimmers on the page. Alua Arthur combines intimate storytelling with a passionate appeal for loving, courageous end-of-life care--what she calls "death embrace." Hers is a powerful testament to getting in touch with something deeper in our lives, by embracing the fact of our own mortality. "Hold that truth in your mind," Alua says, "and wondrous things will begin to grow around it."

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him
 
Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.

A new cookbook from the best-selling and award-winning author that uses recipes to look back at her life and family history—and at her personal journey discovering Jewish cuisine from around the world

"There is no greater authority on Jewish cooking than Joan Nathan." —Michael Solomonov, James Beard award-winning chef and author of Zahav

Before hummus was available in every grocery store—before shakshuka was a dish on every brunch menu—Joan Nathan taught home cooks how and why they should make these now-beloved staples themselves. Here, in her most personal book yet, the beloved authority on global Jewish cuisine uses recipes to look back at her own family’s history— their arrival in America from Germany; her childhood in postwar New York and Rhode Island; her years in Paris, New York, Israel, and Washington, DC. Nathan shares her story—of marriage, motherhood, and a career as a food writer; of a life well-lived and centered around meals—and she punctuates it with all the foods she has come to love.

With over 100 recipes from roast chicken to rugelach, from matzoh ball soup to challah and brisket, here are updated versions of her favorites. But here too are new favorites: Salmon with Preserved Lemon and Za’atar; Fragrant Spiced Chicken with Rice, Eggplant, Peppers, and Zucchini; Mahammar (a Syrian pepper, pomegranate and walnut dip); Moroccan Chicken with Almonds, Cinnamon and Couscous; Joan’s version of the perfect Black and White Cookies.

This is a treasury of recipes and stories—and an invitation to a seat at Nathan's table.

From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.

“Magical thinking” can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.

In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “Halo effect” cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.

An Indie Next Pick!

“A haunting, beautifully written celebration of found sisterhood.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A fearless, engaging, and important memoir.” —Library Journal, starred review
“[A] gorgeously rendered peek behind the curtain of military life.” —Booklist, starred review

A captivating memoir that tells the story of one woman’s experience of joining a community of army wives after leaving her New York City job—a profoundly intimate look at marriage, friendship, and today’s America.

When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia—a town so foreign she might as well have landed on the moon. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone—until she meets the wives.

Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today, The Wives offers a rare and powerful gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.

From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day.

"Sides has mastered the art of you-are-there historical narrative. A thrilling and necessary update to one of history's most consequential cultural collisions." --John Vaillant, New York Times bestselling author of Fire Weather and The Tiger

On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment?

Hampton Sides' bravura account of Cook's last journey both wrestles with Cook's legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science--the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment.

Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain's imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook's intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook's overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter.

At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers.

A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today

“A feat of both scholarship and storytelling.”—Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic

Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.

A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated.

For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.

In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.

Across more than a dozen acclaimed works of fiction, readers have become intimate with Lydia Millet's distinctive voice and sly wit. We Loved It All, her first nonfiction book, combines the precision of fact with the power of narrative to evoke our enmeshment with the more-than-human world.

Emerging from Millet's quarter century of wildlife and climate advocacy, We Loved it All marries scenes from her life with moments of nearness to "the others"-- the animals and plants with whom we share the earth. Accounts of fears and failures, jobs and friendships, childhood and motherhood are interspersed with exquisite accounts of nonhumans and arresting meditations on the power of story to shape the future.

Seeking to understand why we immerse ourselves in the domestic and immediate, turning away from more sweeping views, she examines how grand cultural myths can deny our longing for the company of nature and deprive us of its charisma and inspiration. In a thrilling distillation of experience and emotion, she evinces the familiar sense of feeling both well-meaning and powerless--a creature subject to forces that are baffling in their immensity. The fear and grief of extinction and climate change, Millet suggests, are forms of love that might be turned to resistance.

We Loved It All shimmers with curiosity and laconic humor yet addresses with reverence the most urgent crises of our day. An incantatory, bewitching devotional to the vast and precious bestiary of the earth, it asks that we extend to other living beings the protection they deserve--the simple grace of continued existence.

Decluttering your home has never been easier with this step-by-step action plan. Plus, hundreds of genius tricks help you create a calm and tidy life.

Often the hardest part of organizing is getting started. This attractive book from the experts at Good Housekeeping breaks down your decluttering to-do list into smaller zones so you can tidy up and whip your home into shape.

Whether you're looking to take on every room in the house or focus on trouble spots (like your linen closet and that junk drawer!), this step-by-step action plan will help you decide what to keep and what to let go, as well as give you neat ideas for putting every space and every room in order…and to keep them that way.

With 5-minute tidy-up projects or a 28-day declutter challenge and beautiful photographs throughout, you’ll unlock the secrets to an organized home.

Inside you’ll find how to:

• Divide your organizing projects into zones to make them manageable
• Clear out your closets
• Dejunk the junk drawer–for good!
• Maximize space in the fridge, freezer and pantry
• Free up overstuffed nooks and crannies
• Boost bathroom storage

With inspiring yet practical advice from the home experts at Good Housekeeping, you’ll create order in your home and transform your life.

Blending cutting-edge research with engaging storytelling, The Breakthrough Years offers readers a paradigm-shifting comprehensive understanding of adolescence.

“Just wait until they’re a teenager!”

Many parents of newborns have heard this warning about the stressful phase that’s to come. But what if it doesn’t have to be that way?

Child development expert Ellen Galinsky challenges widely held assumptions about adolescents and offers new ways for parents and others to better understand and interact with them in a way that helps them thrive.

By combining the latest research on cognitive neuroscience with an unprecedented and extensive set of studies of young people nine through nineteen and their families, Galinsky reveals, among other things, that adolescents don’t want to separate completely from their parents but seek a different type of relationship; that they want to be helpers rather than be helped; and that social media can become a positive influence for teens.

Galinsky’s Shared Solutions framework and Possibilities Mindset show you how to turn daily conflicts into opportunities for problem-solving where both teens and parents feel listened to and respected; how to encourage positive risk-taking in your child like standing up for themselves, making new friends, and helping their communities; and how to promote five essential executive function–based skills that can help them succeed now and in the future.

The Breakthrough Years recasts adolescence as a time of possibility for teens and adults, offering breakthrough opportunities for connection.

Diane Kochilas' new cookbook that brings the plant-based cuisine of Ikaria to your dinner table.

Ikaria is an island in Greece where people live to a ripe old age, sometimes living well past 100. Diane Kochilas, host of the television series My Greek Table, is a daughter of Ikaria. The Ikaria Way is her latest cookbook and is filled with easy, contemporary recipes rooted in her background and steeped in the ancient Greek traditions of plant-based cuisine.

As Diane says, Greeks are almost vegan, but they’d never call themselves that. The array of plant-based dishes in the Greek diet is unsurpassed anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Diane’s pantry, and the one she suggests for readers, is culled from the traditions of the Mediterranean and is full of ingredients that have long given food its flavor: herbs, olive oil, nuts, and more. The recipes in The Ikaria Way are simple, almost entirely plant-based, prepared with real food and almost nothing processed, save for the occasional can of tomatoes. Readers will love meze like smoked eggplant with tahini and walnuts or baked chickpeas and pumpkin patties. There are wonderful salads combining strawberries and asparagus and robust mains like white bean stew with eggplant.

The Ikaria Way brings the healthy-eating recipes of an ancient island to readers everywhere. It is destined to take its place alongside Diane’s other books on the shelves of all good home cooks who want healthy eating and robust, delicious flavors on the same plate.

Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, war, and an international system studded with catastrophic risk--the early decades of the twenty-first century may be the most revolutionary period in modern history. But it is not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What are these revolutions, and how can they help us to understand our fraught world?

In this major work, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates the eras and movements that have shaken norms while shaping the modern world. Three such periods hold profound lessons for today. First, in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, a fascinating series of transformations made that tiny land the richest in the world--and created politics as we know it today. Next, the French Revolution, an explosive era that devoured its ideological children and left a bloody legacy that haunts us today. Finally, the mother of all revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, which catapulted Great Britain and the US to global dominance and created the modern world.

Alongside these paradigm-shifting historical events, Zakaria probes four present-day revolutions: globalization, technology, identity, and geopolitics. For all their benefits, the globalization and technology revolutions have produced profound disruptions and pervasive anxiety and our identity. And increasingly, identity is the battlefield on which the twenty-first century's polarized politics are fought. All this is set against a geopolitical revolution as great as the one that catapulted the United States to world power in the late nineteenth century. Now we are entering a world in which the US is no longer the dominant power. As we find ourselves at the nexus of four seismic revolutions, we can easily imagine a dark future. But Zakaria proves that pessimism is premature. If we act wisely, the liberal international order can be revived and populism relegated to the ash heap of history.

As few public intellectuals can, Zakaria combines intellectual range, deep historical insight, and uncanny prescience to once again reframe and illuminate our turbulent present. His bold, compelling arguments make this book essential reading in our age of revolutions.

A poignant, personal reflection on basketball, life, and home—from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America

“Mesmerizing . . . not only the most original sports book I’ve ever read but one of the most moving books I’ve ever read, period.”—Steve James, director of Hoop Dreams

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling. “Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father’s jump shot,” Abdurraqib writes. “The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.”
 
There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it’s basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

Remarkable new discoveries affirm the octopus as one of nature's most intelligent and complex animals.

This new book--written by the beloved author of the international bestseller The Soul of an Octopus, along with Warren Carlyle, founder of Octonation, and enhanced with vivid National Geographic photography--brings us closer than ever to these elusive creatures.

The companion to the highly-anticipated National Geographic television special, this beautifully illustrated book explores the alluring underwater world of the octopus--a creature that resembles an alien lifeform, but whose behavior has earned it a reputation as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.

This magical journey into the world of the octopus will reveal how the large and capable brain of these creatures occupies their whole body-not just their heads--and they can actually adjust their genetic makeup to respond to the demands of the environment. It will allow readers to watch them change shape and color in order to camouflage themselves more effectively than any other species. And it will divulge how octopus mothers give their all in order to bring forth a new generation.

With this offering, acclaimed author Sy Montgomery--known, thanks to her bestselling book, as the "octopus whisperer"--returns to the species she knows and loves, offering current and compassionate stories about the scientists on the front lines of octopus research and conservation.

For all animal lovers--and especially those drawn to this magical marine being--this will be a book to relish, for both its fascinating imagery and its charming storytelling.

The story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture

"They're not going to catch us," Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. "We're on a mission from God." So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists--Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles--made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a "Catholic classic" by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century.

The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.

“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.”
— Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste

A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country’s history.

Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—these writers used words to create a livable world—a "home" —for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society.

It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a community formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal sub-human bondage, transformed itself through the word into a community whose foundational definition was based on overcoming one of history’s most pernicious lies. This collective act of resistance and transcendence is at the heart of its self-definition as a "community." Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, powerful, diverse culture formed by people who have often disagreed markedly about what it means to be "Black," and about how best to shape a usable past out of the materials at hand to call into being a more just and equitable future. 

This is the epic story of how, through essays and speeches, novels, plays, and poems, a long line of creative thinkers has unveiled the contours of—and resisted confinement in—the "black box" inside which this "nation within a nation" has been assigned, willy nilly, from the nation’s founding through to today. This is a book that records the compelling saga of the creation of a people.

The award-winning author of Magical Negro traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

“An engrossing journey through Parker’s expansive and gifted mind.”—Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed

Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery.

In a collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Parker and her therapist, Parker examines America’s cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages. She touches on such topics as the ubiquity of beauty standards that exclude Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby’s fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious.

With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman’s psyche—and of the writer’s search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.

ONE OF THE TOP 10 COOKBOOKS OF SPRING 2024: Food & Wine • ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF SPRING 2024: Epicurious

“Lidey subscribes to the same theory of home cooking that I do. We all want recipes that have ingredients you can buy in almost any grocery store, recipes that are easy enough to make without breaking a sweat that will be delicious and satisfying for either an ordinary weekday dinner or for a special occasion.” —Ina Garten, from the Foreword

From the rising star who learned to cook when she worked for Ina Garten, 100 recipes that are cook-pleasing and crowd-pleasing and written with the shopper, chopper, and dish-doer in mind.

Lidey Heuck landed the most plum after-college job—working for Ina Garten in her East Hampton kitchen. There, she learned how to develop recipes that work every time and how to put together dishes that are at once special and unfussy.

Cooking in Real Life represents the golden middle ground that new and experienced home cooks crave: recipes that are inventive but not overly complicated, that use familiar ingredients but encourage us to do things a little bit differently. They are designed to be low-effort, practical, and high-reward. Lidey combines straight-forward delicious cooking with innovative, vegetable-forward recipes, inspired by bold flavors from near and far. Chapters and recipes include the following:

Busy, fuss-free weeknights: Salmon with Honey and Chili Crunch, Cider-Glazed Sausages with Apples and Fennel, Saucy Shrimp alla Vodka. Plus, dozens of ideas for turning single recipes into one complete meal (Think: adding some sauteed shrimp to Shaved Carrot Salad with Ginger Tahini Dressing).

Flexible, seasonally-inspired recipes with easy-to-find ingredients: Maple-Roasted Squash with Grapes and Shallots, Escarole with Cara Cara Oranges, Spicy Paloma Punch.

Celebratory dishes for occasions that call for something extra special: Short Ribs with Port, Shallots, and Cranberries; Champagne Chicken; and Rainbow Sprinkle Ice Cream Cake.

Throughout, Lidey includes swaps, make-ahead hacks, and tips for making leftovers into something new. Cooking in Real Life meets you where you are—whether you’re here for the practical tips or the endless possibilities.