In "elegant, finely honed prose" (The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life—its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, she is always wickedly entertaining.

    The Intellectual Devotional is a secular version of the same—a collection of 365 short lessons that will inspire and invigorate the reader every day of the year. Each daily digest of wisdom is drawn from one of seven fields of knowledge: history, literature, philosophy, mathematics and science, religion, fine arts, and music.Impress your friends by explaining Plato's Cave Allegory, pepper your cocktail party conversation with opera terms, and unlock the mystery of how batteries work. Daily readings range from important passages in literature to basic principles of physics, from pivotal events in history to images of famous paintings with accompanying analysis. The book's goal is to refresh knowledge we've forgotten, make new discoveries, and exercise modes of thinking that are ordinarily neglected once our school days are behind us. Offering an escape from the daily grind to contemplate higher things, The Intellectual Devotional is a great way to awaken in the morning or to revitalize one's mind before retiring in the evening.

    This volume provides basic writings of Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rilke, Kafka, Ortega, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, including some not previously translated, along with an invaluable introductory essay by Walter Kaufmann.

    Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.

    Thisoften leads exasperated viewers to exclaim--is this really art?In this invaluable primer on aesthetics, Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are so highly valued in art, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many engrossing examples. Writing clearly and perceptively, she explores the cultural meanings of art in different contexts, and highlights the continuities of tradition that stretch from modern, often sensational, works back to the ancient halls of the Parthenon, to the medieval cathedral of Chartres, and to African nkisi nkondi fetish statues. She explores the difficulties of interpretation, examines recent scientific research into the ways the brain perceives art, and looks to the still-emerging worlds of art on the web, video art, art museum CD-ROMS, and much more. In addition, Freeland guides us through the various theorists of art, from Aristotle and Kant to Baudrillard. Lastly, throughout this nuanced account of theories, artists, and works, Freeland provides us with a rich understanding of how cultural significance is captured in a physical medium, and why challenging our perceptions is, and always has been, central to the whole endeavor.It is instructive to recall that Henri Matisse himself was originally derided as a "wild beast." To horrified critics, his bold colors and distorted forms were outrageous. A century later, what was once shocking is now considered beautiful. And that, writes Freeland, is art.

     Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists--mostly women, mostly queer--whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson.Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman--and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

    Bette Davis's eyes, Joan Crawford's bitchy elegance, Stepin Fetchit's stereotype, Sidney Poitier's superhuman black man...  These are the movie stars and the qualities that influenced James Baldwin...  and now become part of his incisive look at racism in American movies.Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist, offering us a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions.  Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness.  And here, too, is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social change.From The Birth of a Nation to The Exorcist--one of America's most important writers turns his critical eye to American film.

    It's a mad, sexy, sad, scary, obsessive, ruthless, joyful, and utterly, utterly personal thing. There's not the writer and then me; there's just me. All of my life connects to the writing. All of it.'A unique look into the BBC's most popular family drama, Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale is a year in the life of the hit television series, as told by the show's Head Writer and Executive Producer. A candid and in-depth correspondence between Russell T Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook, the book explores in detail Russell's work on Series Four, revealing how he plans the series and works with the show's writers; where he gets his ideas for plot, character and scenes; how actors are cast and other creative decisions are made; and how he juggles the demands of Doctor Who with the increasingly successful Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures spin-offs.Russell's scripts are discussed as they develop, and Russell and Benjamin's wide-ranging discussions bring in experiences from previous series of Doctor Who as well as other shows Russell has written and created, including Queer as Folk, Bob & Rose, and The Second Coming. The reader is given total access to the show as it's created, and the writing is everything you would expect from Russell T Davies: warm, witty, insightful, and honest.Fully illustrated with never-before-seen photos and artwork - including original drawings by Russell himself - The Writer's Tale is a not only the ultimate Doctor Who book, but a celebration of great writing and great television

    This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.

    Dr. Frye offers, in addition, challenging and stimulating ideas for the teaching of literature at lower school levels, designed both to promote an early interest and to lead the student to the knowledge and kaleidoscopic experience found in the study of literature.Dr. Frye's proposals for the teaching of literature include an early emphasis on poetry, the "central and original literary form," intensive study of the Bible, as literature, and the Greek and Latin classics, as these embody all the great enduring themes of western man, and study of the great literary forms: tragedy and comedy, romance and irony.

    This new book by one of our finest critics explains--historically, in depth, and with interviews with the celebrated creators themselves--how the art of must-see/binge-watch television evolved. Darwin had his theory of evolution, and David Bianculli has his. Bianculli's theory has to do with the concept of quality television: what it is and, crucially, how it got that way. In tracing the evolutionary history of our progress toward a Platinum Age of Television--our age, the era of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Mad Men and The Wire and Homeland and Girls--he focuses on the development of the classic TV genres, among them the sitcom, the crime show, the miniseries, the soap opera, the western, the animated series and the late night talk show. In each genre, he selects five key examples of the form, tracing its continuities and its dramatic departures and drawing on exclusive and in-depth interviews with many of the most famed auteurs in television history.Television has triumphantly come of age artistically; David Bianculli's book is the first to date to examine, in depth and in detail and with a keen critical and historical sense, how this inspiring development came about.

    Owen Gleiberman has spent his life watching movies-first at the drive-in, where his parents took him to see wildly inappropriate adult fare like Rosemary's Baby when he was a wide-eyed 9 year old, then as a possessed cinemaniac who became a film critic right out of college. In Movie Freak, his enthrallingly candid, funny, and eye-opening memoir, Gleiberman captures what it's like to live life through the movies, existing in thrall to a virtual reality that becomes, over time, more real than reality itself. Gleiberman paints a bittersweet portrait of his complicated and ultimately doomed friendship with Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic who was his mentor and muse. He also offers an unprecedented inside look at what the experience of being a critic is really all about, detailing his stint at The Boston Phoenix and then, starting in 1990, at EW, where he becomes a voice of obsession battling-to a fault-to cling to his independence. Gleiberman explores the movies that shaped him, from the films that first made him want to be a critic (Nashville and Carrie), to what he hails as the sublime dark trilogy of the 1980s (Blue Velvet, Sid and Nancy, and Manhunter), to the scruffy humanity of Dazed and Confused, to the brilliant madness of Natural Born Killers, to the transcendence of Breaking the Waves, to the pop rapture of Moulin Rouge! He explores his partnership with Lisa Schwarzbaum and his friendships and encounters with such figures as Oliver Stone, Russell Crowe, Richard Linklater, and Ben Affleck. He also writes with confessional intimacy about his romantic relationships and how they echoed the behavior of his bullying, philandering father. And he talks about what film criticism is becoming in the digital age: a cacophony of voices threatened by an insidious new kind of groupthink. Ultimately, Movie Freak is about the primal pleasure of film and the enigmatic dynamic between critic and screen. For Gleiberman, the moving image has a talismanic power, but it also represents a kind of sweet sickness, a magnificent obsession that both consumes and propels him.

     Celebrated writer and contrarian Bill James has voraciously read true crime throughout his life and has been interested in writing a book on the topic for decades. Now, with Popular Crime, James takes readers on an epic journey from Lizzie Borden to the Lindbergh baby, from the Black Dahlia to O. J. Simpson, explaining how crimes have been committed, investigated, prosecuted and written about, and how that has profoundly influenced our culture over the last few centuries— even if we haven’t always taken notice. Exploring such phenomena as serial murder, the fluctuation of crime rates, the value of evidence, radicalism and crime, prison reform and the hidden ways in which crimes have shaped, or reflected, our society, James chronicles murder and misdeeds from the 1600s to the present day. James pays particular attention to crimes that were sensations during their time but have faded into obscurity, as well as still-famous cases, some that have never been solved, including the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Boston Strangler and JonBenet Ramsey. Satisfyingly sprawling and tremendously entertaining, Popular Crime is a professed amateur’s powerful examination of the incredible impact crime stories have on our society, culture and history.

    Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller shows how women's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconsious. Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes helps women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

    As if to spite the pollsters and talking heads, the frank and brilliant former governor, Jed Bartlet, captures the White House to become President of the United States. Surrounding himself with the best and the brightest, the president chooses his staff from the team responsible for putting him in the White House. Leo McGarry, the president's oldest friend -- and the man who convinces Bartlet to run -- is named chief of staff. One of the most powerful men in his party, Leo presides over the West Wing of the White House with a firm hand and a fatherly tone. With uncanny prescience, Leo puts his faith in Toby Ziegler, the only original staff member to make it through the campaign. Despite six previous failures, Toby's work along with a new team of friends and strangers, helps get Bartlet nominated and elected. Now, as the communications director for the White House, Toby holds an important role in crafting the president's word.Using the power instilled in him as an old family friend, Leo McGarry brings Josh Lyman to the campaign with a simple request to come hear Jed Bartlet speak. In a VFW hall in Nashua, New Hampshire, the skeptical Josh does come and is amazed to finally find a candidate to believe in. Convinced that the man should be president, Lyman gets his friend Sam Seaborn to quit his job at a major law firm where he is about to become a partner and join Bartlet's campaign. Gladly serving at the pleasure of President Bartlet, Sam is now the White House deputy communications director and his friend Josh is the deputy chief of staff. Two men from different backgrounds from opposite ends of thecountry are united not just by friendship but by their devotion to the president."Is Jed Bartlet a good man?" is all that C.J. Cregg wants to know before she agrees to work for him. Toby Ziegler's assurance is all she needs to hear. In an age where the news cycle can last mere seconds, C.J. is the press secretary to the most demanding pool of reporters in the world, the White House Press Corps.With a staff of more than 1,100 people, the West Wing overflows with offices and personnel. Although the upper echelon provides the very public face of the White House, a support staff of hundreds regularly carries out the duties of the executive branch of the government. Filling these desks are numerous aides and assistants, like Donna Moss, who started working for Josh Lyman during the nomination campaign and is now "deputy-deputy chief of staff." Among her many responsibilities is to make sure that her boss is on time for meetings and fully prepared -- which sometimes means making sure that he is dressed.While the White House is very much a public institution, there is one man in particular whose job requires him to be either an imposing figure or totally invisible, often at the same time. Charlie Young, personal aide to the president, truly determines who has access. Among the many tasks laid out before this brilliant young man, he is first and foremost the keeper of the schedule.These people, and a staff of hundreds more, lead America from the most privileged office in the world, from insideTHE WEST WINGStep inside the Bartlet Administration in this richly detailed, perfectly imagined official companion to television's most sophisticated dramatic series, "TheWest Wing. Created by Aaron Sorkin, "The West Wing won nine Emmy(R) Awards, the Humanitas Prize, the Peabody Award, and three Television Critics Association Awards in its first season alone -- and is acclaimed for its superb writing, marvelous portrayals by a stellar cast, and an intelligent, authentic depiction of White House life. Now, the show that has set television's new standard brings you this insider's guide -- which not only presents fascinating details into how groundbreaking television is made, but captures the colorful world of "The West Wing and the nation's capital under the Bartlet Administration.The prestigious Peabody Award cited "The West Wing as "a magnificent episodic series that depicts the tension and back-room drama of presidential politics with an unusual mixture of maturity and humanity." Now, experience the excitement and authenticity of "The West Wing as never before, with this unique, in-depth tribute.