The author of The Arab of the Future chronicles the hilarious and heartbreaking true life of a young girl growing up in Paris. "Funny, well-observed...contains immense daring and depth...Sattouf has drawn a portrait of a generation." —Observer, "Graphic Novel of the Month" Once a week for three years, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf had a chat with his friend’s outgoing young daughter, Esther, in which she told him about her family, her school, her friends, her hopes, her dreams, and her fears. After each meeting, he would create a one-page comic strip based on what she had said. Esther’s Notebooks gathers 156 of those strips, spanning Esther’s life from ages nine through twelve, giving us a delightful look into the daily dramas of this thoughtful, intelligent, and high-spirited girl. As The Guardian noted: “Each page of Esther’s Notebooks is self-contained—there’s usually a neat punchline—but read them all, and you come to see that Sattouf has drawn a portrait of a generation: their hopes, dreams and cultural references; the way that their personalities, backgrounds—many of the children portrayed have parents who are immigrants—and preconceived ideas about sexuality begin to play out even before they’ve begun secondary school. The result is a bit like a cartoon version of Michael Apted’s landmark TV series, Up. These funny, well-observed comics are fantastically daring.”

The hilarious, heartbreaking, and painfully true life of a girl growing up in Paris, from the acclaimed comic book artist and author of The Arab of the Future Every week, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf has a chat with his friend’s 10-year old daughter, Esther. She tells him about her life, her family, her school, her friends, her hopes, her dreams and her fears. And then he creates a one-page comic strip based on what she says. This book is a collection of 156 of those strips, comprising the first three volumes as they appeared in Europe, spanning Esther’s life from age 10 to 12. As The Guardian noted: “Each page of Esther’s Notebooks is self-contained—there’s usually a neat punchline—but read them all, and you come to see that Sattouf has drawn a portrait of a generation: their hopes, dreams and cultural references; the way that their personalities, backgrounds—many of the children portrayed have parents who are immigrants—and preconceived ideas about sexuality begin to play out even before they’ve begun secondary school. The result is a bit like a cartoon version of Michael Apted’s landmark TV series, Up. These funny, well-observed comics are fantastically daring.”

Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear. Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving in its adherence to tradition, faces a singular affliction: some mothers vanish, disappearing into the clouds. It is the exquisite pain and intrinsic beauty of their lives; it sets them apart from people elsewhere and gives them meaning. Vera, a young girl when her mother went, is on the cusp of adulthood herself. As her peers begin to marry and become mothers, they speculate about who might be the first to go, each wondering about her own fate. Reveling in their gossip, they witness each other in motherhood, waiting for signs: this one devotes herself to her child too much, this one not enough—that must surely draw the affliction’s gaze. When motherhood comes for Vera, she is faced with the question: will she be able to stay and mother her beloved child, or will she disappear? Provocative and hypnotic, Alexis Schaitkin’s Elsewhere is at once a spellbinding revelation and a rumination on the mysterious task of motherhood and all the ways in which a woman can lose herself to it; the self-monitoring and judgment, the doubts and unknowns, and the legacy she leaves behind.

Through diaries and letters, Esther Kruse, a woman who settles into life on a small farm on the South Dakota prairie, provides insight into what it means to be a wife, mother, homemaker, and one-room school teacher during much of the 20th century on the isolated prairie of central South Dakota. Her life is explored in the narration of her granddaughter, who studies the diaries after their discovery in her grandmother’s attic. As the author pieces together her grandmother’s life from the previously unknown diaries, a story evolves, illustrating the value of family and small town community, through great events and small, and is an example of the human struggle to bring some small bit of civilization to a vast and wild landscape. The Book of Esther follows nearly 50 years in the life of Esther Kruse. It begins with her first diary written in her late 20s, as a single woman finding life on her own as a one-room school teacher in the Great Depression, and continues as she marries the captain of the local baseball team, raises two children, struggles with all the daily tasks of a farm, the wild South Dakota weather, illness, and finally, cancer. Through it all, she shines as an example of Midwestern strength and faith and the character that has shaped the heartland of America.

During his lifetime, Robert Frost notoriously resisted collecting his prose--going so far as to halt the publication of one prepared compilation and to "lose" the transcripts of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he delivered at Harvard in 1936. But for all his qualms, Frost conceded to his son that "you can say a lot in prose that verse won't let you say," and that the prose he had written had in fact "made good competition for [his] verse." This volume, the first critical edition of Robert Frost's prose, allows readers and scholars to appreciate the great American author's forays beyond poetry, and to discover in the prose that he did make public--in newspapers, magazines, journals, speeches, and books--the wit, force, and grace that made his poetry famous. The Collected Prose of Robert Frost offers an extensive and illuminating body of work, ranging from juvenilia--Frost's contributions to his high school Bulletin--to the charming "chicken stories" he wrote as a young family man for The Eastern Poultryman and Farm Poultry, to such famous essays as "The Figure a Poem Makes" and the speeches and contributions to magazines solicited when he had become the Grand Old Man of American letters. Gathered, annotated, and cross-referenced by Mark Richardson, the collection is based on extensive work in archives of Frost's manuscripts. It provides detailed notes on the author's habits of composition and on important textual issues and includes much previously unpublished material. It is a book of boundless appeal and importance, one that should find a home on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Frost.

The first volume of People Speak took its place as an instant bestseller, and this new, second volume is equally spectacular. Chaim Walder's sensitivity, intuition, and compassion make this collection of 28 true stories a reading experience like no other. Experience the troubles and triumphs of well-drawn characters, get caught up in the heartfelt dialogue and stunning plots. This book for adults, by the famed author of the Kids Speak series, will touch a chord in everyone's heart.

This exceptional collection provides new insight into the life of North Carolina writer and activist Paul Green (1894-1981), the first southern playwright to attract international acclaim for his socially conscious dramas. Green, who taught philosophy and drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for In Abraham's Bosom, an authentic drama of black life. Among his other Broadway productions were Native Son and Johnny Johnson. From the 1930s onward, Green created fifteen outdoor historical productions known as symphonic dramas, thereby inventing a distinctly American theater form. These include The Lost Colony (1937), which is still performed today. Laurence Avery has selected and annotated the 329 letters in this volume from over 9,000 existing pieces. The letters, to such figures as Sherwood Anderson, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, John Dos Passos, Zora Neale Hurston, and others interested in the arts and human rights in the South, are alive with the intellect, buoyant spirit, and sensitivity to the human condition that made Green such an inspiring force in the emerging New South. Avery's introduction and full bibliography of the playwright's works and first productions give readers a context for understanding Green's life and times.

A groundbreaking collection of Holocaust literature by the heirs to the greatest evil of our time. History is preserved in the memories of the survivors of the Holocaust and the imaginations of their children, the so-called Second Generation. Nothing Makes You Free considers the heritage of the descendants of those who faced the horrific lie that adorned the gates of many German concentration camps: "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Makes You Free"). In the words of this groundbreaking anthology's introduction: "Other kids' parents didn't have numbers on their arms. Other kids' parents didn't talk about massacres as easily as baseball. Other kids' parents loved them, but never gazed at their offspring as miracles in the flesh....How do you deal with this responsibility? Well, if you were a writer, you wrote." Gathered here are writings of both fiction and nonfiction, ranging from farce to fantasy to brutal realism, from an international selection of writers, including Art Spiegelman, Eva Hoffman, Peter Singer, and Carl Friedman. Contributors: Lea Aini, David Albahari, Tammie Bob, Lilly Brett, Melvin Jules Bukiet, Leon De Winter, Esther Dischereit, Barbara Finkelstein, Alain Finkielkraut, Carl Friedman, Eva Hoffman, Helena Janaczek, Anne Karpf, Alan Kaufman, Ruth Knafo Setton, Mihaly Kornis, Savyon Liebrecht, Alcina Lubitch Domecq, Gila Lustiger, Sonia Pilcer, Doron Rabinovici, Henri Raczymov, Victoria Redel, Thane Rosenbaum, Goran Rosenberg, Peter Singer, Joseph Skibell, Art Spiegelman, J. J. Steinfeld, Val Vinokurov "Nothing Makes You Free is a wide-ranging, exuberant, and altogether powerful collection. A necessary reminder of the lingering effects of the Holocaust and of all the embers—in each generation—saved from the fire."—Aryeh Lev Stollman, author of The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul "What happens to a generation of writers born after but indelibly shaped by the Holocaust? From the bitterly sardonic title of Bukiet's clear-eyed and refreshingly unsentimental collection to its last words, this volume will cause all to see this past in startlingly new and unexpected ways. This is certainly not their parent's Holocaust. But in all their immense variety, dexterity, oppressed imaginativeness, pain, and wonder, these writings show how even as a 'vicarious past,' the Holocaust continues to shape both inner and outer worlds of the survivors' offspring and now, by extension, our own as well."—James E. Young, author of At Memory's Edge and The Texture of Memory "A superb anthology...tenderness mixes with rage, sorrow with bitterness, in this first-rate gathering of pieces by those who refuse to forget."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review "A trenchant array...convincingly demonstrate[s] that the Second-Generation experience and the artistic vision growing from it is not merely a diluted version of the survivors' experience, but a distinct phenomenon and ethos of its own."—Miami Herald "An important book."—Booklist

From the author of The Arab of the Future, the first book in a bestselling series of graphic novels following the life of a real girl growing up in Paris - hilarious, tearjerking and painfully true.

Designers are used to working for clients, but there is nothing better than when the client is oneself. Graphic and product designers, who are skilled with the tools and masters aesthetics, are now in the forefront of this growing entrepreneur movement. Whether personal or collective, drive is the common denominator of all entrepreneurial pursuit; of course, then comes the brilliant idea; and finally the fervent wherewithal to make and market the result. The Design Entrepreneur is the first book to survey this new field and showcase the innovators who are creating everything from books to furniture, clothes to magazines, plates to surfboards, and more. Through case studies with designers like Dave Eggers, Maira Kalman, Charles Spencer Anderson, Seymour Chwast, Jet Mous, Nicholas Callaway, Jordi Duró, and over thirty more from the United States and Europe, this book explores the whys, hows, and wherefores of the conception and production processes. The design entrepreneur must take the leap away from the safety of the traditional designer role into the precarious territory where the public decides what works and what doesn’t. This is the book that shows how that is accomplished.