Book picks similar to
The Shock of Recognition by Edmund Wilson


nonfiction
schlesinger-cultural-literacy
letteratura-classica
literary-criticism

Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100


Caro Llewellyn - 2011
    Jones—more than 100 luminaries reflect on the treasures of America’s favorite public library.Marking the centennial of The New York Public Library’s Beaux-Arts landmark at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, now called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Know the Past, Find the Future harnesses the thoughts of an eclectic assortment of notable people as they ponder an even more eclectic assortment of objects. From among the Library’s vast collections, these writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, musicians, athletes, architects, choreographers, and journalists—as well as some of the curators who have preserved these riches—each select an item and describe its unique significance. The result, in words and photographs, is a glimpse of what a great library can be.Published by Penguin Classics for The New York Public Library

Make It Scream, Make It Burn


Leslie Jamison - 2019
    A combination of memoir, criticism, and journalism, Make It Scream, Make It Burn is Leslie Jamison's profound exploration of the oceanic depths of longing and the reverberations of obsession. Among Jamison's subjects are 52 Blue, deemed "the loneliest whale in the world"; the eerie specter of reincarnated children; devotees of an online existence called Second Life, to the exclusion of their real lives; Civil War photography; and an entire museum dedicated to relationship breakups. Through these essays and through forays into her own obsessions and longings, Jamison delves into the nature of storytelling itself. We wonder alongside her whether it is ever really possible to hear someone else's story without somehow making it our own, without seeing it through the cracked windows of our private selves.Throughout these essays, Jamison, who has frequently been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, shines the spotlight every bit as uncomfortably on herself as she does on others. Unlike the standard journalistic practice, Jamison acknowledges her emotional investment in her subjects, always with utmost clarity and unwavering empathy. In her view, true art cannot be made any other way. Indeed, this refusal to hide—this emotional frankness—is precisely the quality that makes Jamison's questing and irrepressible voice impossible not to fall in love with.

Waterloo: The French Perspective


Andrew W. Field - 2012
    Even after 200 years of intensive research and the publication of hundreds of books and articles on the battle, the French perspective and many of the primary French sources are underrepresented in the written record. So it is high time this weakness in the literature – and in our understanding of the battle – was addressed, and that is the purpose of Andrew Field’s thought-provoking new study. He has tracked down over ninety firsthand French accounts, most of which have never been previously published in English, and he has combined them with accounts from the other participants in order to create a graphic new narrative of one of the world’s decisive battles. Virtually all of the hitherto unpublished testimony provides fascinating new detail on the battle and many of the accounts are vivid, revealing and exciting.

FOUND Magazine #1


Davy Rothbart
    Check out a list of teacher-stalking license plates (maybe yours is in there). Look to found resumes for inspiration in your own job hunt. Learn all about Hawaii from one woman's vacation log. Read the inaugural FOUND interview with Lynda Barry. And of course, the find that started it all: Page Me Later. All that, plus loads of found photos, notes, drawings, and more!

Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL


John Feinstein - 2005
    Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminished intensity, and it devours its players. Confronting injuries, trades, and the grim reality of competition, every NFL team prepares constantly for the likelihood -- the certainty -- that even franchise players can go down at any time. And someone new must be ready, trained, and primed to step in at the highest level. Bestselling sportswriter John Feinstein persuaded one NFL team to lift the extraordinary secrecy that shrouds the sport and let him see how a team operates at the closest level. One team let him join every practice, every coaches' meeting, every players' gathering, every strategy debate. From the give-and-take of draft day, into the grinder of summer training camps, and from 100-degree practice games to the last game in frigid conditions, Feinstein reveals how a football team works -- or fails to work -- as no writer has done before. Next Man Up unveils rituals (what a coach tells a player at the moment he cuts him); rules (the inanities of league-appointed "uniform Nazis"); conflicts (the scouts vs. the coaches, the general managers vs. the agents, the offense vs. the defense, the special teams coaches vs. everybody); money (how much a journeyman makes, and how his life differs from the multi-million-dollar-a-year star players)-every nuance of a team's life, from the owner's goals to the coach's day-to-day travails to the feeling of the sleet-soaked ball in the hands of a receiver on artificial turf. The access John Feinstein enjoyed allows him to discuss with equal understanding the owner's management strategy, the coaches' and coordinators' plans for each new game, and how it all affects the players themselves. Anyone who loves football -- any team, in any era -- will savor the thousands of details revealed here for the first time, and the extraordinary drama that goes into following week after week, the most sensational sport in America.

Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits


Jack Murnighan - 2009
    Did anyone tell you that Anna Karenina is a beach read, that Dickens is hilarious, that the Iliad’s battle scenes rival Hollywood’s for gore, or that Joyce is at his best when he’s talking about booze, sex, or organ meats? Writer and professor Jack Murnighan says it’s time to give literature another look, but this time you’ll enjoy yourself. With a little help, you’ll see just how great the great books are: how they can make you laugh, moisten your eyes, turn you on, and leave you awestruck and deeply moved. Beowulf on the Beach is your field guide–erudite, witty, and fun-loving–for helping you read and relish fifty of the biggest (and most skipped) classics of all time. For each book, Murnighan reveals how to get the most out of your reading and provides a crib sheet that includes the Buzz, the Best Line, What’s Sexy, and What to Skip.

I'll Tell You One Damn Thing and That's All I Know


Jann Arden - 2004
    It's this juxtaposition, the poet's gift for poignant love songs paired with a comedian's timing and self-deprecating wit, that has earned Jann a legion of loyal fans on the stage as well as the page. Two years after the success of her first publication if i knew, don(c)^t you think i'd tell you? (Insomniac Press), acclaimed singer / songwriter and now bestselling author Jann Arden is at it again with her second book, i'll tell you one damn thing, and that's all i know. Little escapes the observant and immensely creative Jann whose musings and entertaining ramblings travel beyond goose poop (if you don't remember, buy the first book) to ponder the state of the world, the state of the States, and the state of her hair (she really is a blonde).

Thereby Hangs a Tale


Charles Earle Funk - 1950
    Dictionaries don’t have the space to tell us all the mysteries but now Dr. Funk, with humor and insight, tells us the strange and intriguing stories of hundreds of words and how they came to be a part of our language.

The Black Book of Hollywood Beauty Secrets


Kym Douglas - 2006
    What did they use? How often? Where did they get it? How can we do it, too? And they told us. We couldn’t believe it either.” Kym Douglas, host of the upcoming Lifetime makeover show Queen and the image consultant on The View, and celebrity journalist Cindy Pearlman had always wanted to know how the A-list stars looked so, well, A-list. It turns out that even the most carefully guarded stars were more than happy to dish. Collected here, in their own words, celebrities and their beauty gurus reveal their tricks of the trade.How do they reduce puffiness, lose five pounds in a week, put shine in their hair, buff their skin, and vacuum their pores without spending a fortune? Find out from Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lindsay Lohan, Beyonce Knowles, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Hurley, Charlize Theron, and many, many more!Kym Douglas is the creator and host of the upcoming Lifetime Television makeover show, Queen, airing in October and the image consultant on The View. She appears regularly on Soap Talk, Good Day Live, Before & After’noon, and Your Weekend with Jim Brickman.

Arguably: Selected Essays


Christopher Hitchens - 2011
    Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, Arguably burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as (to quote Christopher Buckley) our "greatest living essayist in the English language."

Better Late Than Never: From Barrow Boy to Ballroom


Len Goodman - 2009
    Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant. But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life. Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.

The Boy Who Outwitted Mengele


Michael Popik - 2018
    Miki grew up in the small town of Levice in Czechoslovakia. In 1944, his life changed forever. At the age of 13, Miki and his family were sent to the concentration camps at Auschwitz. Miki survived against all odds and ultimately triumphed to live a life of love. “Miki Popik shares an incredible tale of survival, courage and resilience. He speaks of his life as a child in Czechoslovakia at the dawn of World War II, of his imprisonment at two concentration camps, of his family’s struggles for survival, and his efforts after the war to locate his family. Though he was the only one from his extended family to survive, he felt very fortunate to have learned where in a mass grave in Mühldorf, Germany, his father and brother had been interred. Mühldorf was a sub-camp of the infamous Dachau, not far from Munich. Miki’s story moves like none other.” – Alan S. Blaustein, JD, MD “In 2012, my classmates and I from the Sherman Block Supervisory Leadership Institute were fortunate to hear you speak at the Museum of Tolerance. Your words were truly inspiring! I left the museum that day speechless and humbled. I realized that nothing in my life can be assimilated to what you have experienced in yours. It shed a new light on the human race and how we treat one another.” – Sergeant Robert O’Brine, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Dept.

Damaged: My Story


Paul Stewart - 2017
    It was a dream that would lead him into a nightmare of sexual and physical abuse from which he has still not recovered. Stewart was abused every day for four years by his junior football coach. He suffered in silence and embarked on a successful career that saw him play for Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Sunderland, scoring in an FA Cup final and winning caps for England. Behind it all, he was a broken man – many times he wished he could end his life. He turned to drink and drugs as a way of coping with his devastating secret. In 2016, Stewart was sitting at his office desk one morning when he read a Daily Mirror story about a footballer who had been abused. His world was about to change… Paul Stewart: Damaged is one of the most powerful and emotionally charged football life stories you will read.

Different Parts of Everywhere: Cycling the World, Part Three: Mori to Paris


Chris Pountney - 2021
    

Compassion Amidst the Chaos: Tales told by an ER Doc


Christopher Davis, MD - 2020
    You meet one when life doesn't go as planned. Survival requires immediate dependence and trust in a stranger in a white coat. As soon as the imminent danger has passed— they are off to the next case. Many patients don't realize that their stories stay with those that served them. Patients have the most to teach about humility and humanity."Compassion Amidst the Chaos" is brimming with the tension, anguish, exhaustion, relief, gratitude, and compassion that are all part of a typical day at work in the ER. Travel with Dr. Chris Davis through the cases he remembers most from his 35-year career as an emergency medicine doctor.