Set mainly in the Pittsburgh district of Homewood, these 10 stories depict African Americans from all walks of life--ancestors, family, and lovers caught in the vortex of American history and haunted by their own particular demons. "(Wideman is) one of our very finest writers, period".--New Republic.

In All Stories Are True, Tracie Church Guzzio provides the first full-length study of John Edgar Wideman's entire oeuvre to date. Specifically, Guzzio examines the ways in which Wideman (b. 1941) engages with three crucial themes--history, myth, and trauma--throughout his career, showing how they intertwine. Guzzio argues that, for four decades, the influential African American writer has endeavored to create a version of the African American experience that runs counter to mainstream interpretations, using history and myth to confront and then heal the trauma caused by slavery and racism. Wideman's work intentionally blurs boundaries between fiction and autobiography, myth and history, particularly as that history relates to African American experience in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The fusion of fiction, national history, and Wideman's personal life is characteristic of his style, which--due to its complexity and smudging of genre distinctions--has presented analytic difficulties for literary scholars. Despite winning the PEN/Faulkner award twice, for Sent for You Yesterday (1984) and Philadelphia Fire (1990), Wideman remains understudied. Of particular value is Guzzio's analysis of the many ways in which Wideman alludes to his previous works. This intertextuality allows Wideman to engage his books in direct, intentional dialogue with each other through repeated characters, images, folktales, and songs. In Wideman's challenging of a monolithic view of history and presenting alternative perspectives to it, and his allowing past, present, and future time to remain fluid in the narratives, Guzzio finds an author firm in his notion that all stories and all perspectives have merit.

Tuesday night: vodka and dancing at the Hungry Duck. Wednesday morning: posing as an expert on Pushkin at the university. Thursday night: more vodka and girl-chasing at Propaganda. Friday morning: a hungover tour of Gorky's house. Martin came to Moscow at the turn of the millennium hoping to discover the country of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and his beloved Chekhov. Instead he found a city turned on its head, where the grimmest vestiges of Soviet life exist side by side with the nonstop hedonism of the newly rich. Along with his hard-living expat friends, Martin spends less and less time on his studies, choosing to learn about the Mysterious Russian Soul from the city's unhinged nightlife scene. But as Martin's research becomes a quest for existential meaning, love affairs and literature lead to the same hard-won lessons. Russians know: There is more to life than happiness. Back to Moscow is an enthralling story of debauchery, discovery, and the Russian classics. In prose recalling the neurotic openheartedness of Ben Lerner and the whiskey-sour satire of Bret Easton Ellis, Guillermo Erades has crafted an unforgettable coming-of-age story and a complex portrait of a radically changing city.

"Natchez, Mississippi, once had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in America, and its wealth was built on slavery and cotton. Today it has the greatest concentration of antebellum mansions in the South, and a culture full of unexpected contradictions. Prominent white families dress up in hoopskirts and Confederate uniforms for ritual celebrations of the Old South, yet Natchez is also progressive enough to elect a gay black man for mayor with 91 percent of the vote"--

Awards and honors for "Not So True Stories and Unreasonable Rhymes: Bank Street College, Best Books of the Year.

“Wonderful." —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Celebrating the 20th anniversary of storytelling phenomenon The Moth, 45 unforgettable true stories about risk, courage, and facing the unknown, drawn from the best ever told on their stages Carefully selected by the creative minds at The Moth, and adapted to the page to preserve the raw energy of live storytelling, All These Wonders features voices both familiar and new. Alongside Meg Wolitzer, John Turturro, and Tig Notaro, readers will encounter: an astronomer gazing at the surface of Pluto for the first time, an Afghan refugee learning how much her father sacrificed to save their family, a hip-hop star coming to terms with being a “one-hit wonder,” a young female spy risking everything as part of Churchill’s “secret army” during World War II, and more. High-school student and neuroscientist alike, the storytellers share their ventures into uncharted territory—and how their lives were changed indelibly by what they discovered there. With passion, and humor, they encourage us all to be more open, vulnerable, and alive.

Every year, one in four American adults suffers from a diagnosable mental health disorder. In these true stories, writers and their loved ones struggle as their worlds are upended. What do you do when your father kills himself, or your mother is committed to a psych ward, or your daughter starts hearing voices telling her to harm herself—or when you yourself hear such voices? Addressing bipolar disorder, OCD, trichillomania, self-harm, PTSD, and other diagnoses, these stories vividly depict the difficulties and sorrows—and sometimes, too, the unexpected and surprising rewards—of living with mental illness.

A New York Times bestseller—over one million copies sold! A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. With a forward by Markus Zusak, interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney, and black-and-white interior art throughout, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

“An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement” from the prisoners who have survived it (New York Review of Books). On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Now, in a book that will add a startling new dimension to the debates around human rights and prison reform, former and current prisoners describe the devastating effects of isolation on their minds and bodies, the solidarity expressed between individuals who live side by side for years without ever meeting one another face to face, the ever-present specters of madness and suicide, and the struggle to maintain hope and humanity. As Chelsea Manning wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read.” These firsthand accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts, exploring the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of solitary confinement. “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for twenty-three hours a day, for months, sometimes for years at a time? That is not going to make us safer. That’s not going to make us stronger.” —President Barack Obama “Elegant but harrowing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A potent cry of anguish from men and women buried way down in the hole.” —Kirkus Reviews