This ingeniously useful compendium--organized to suit whatever time that the reader has available at that moment--offers reading material to fill those gray, in-between moments in life with beauty, wonder, insight, and emotion.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the venerable "Paris Review" comes a unique anthology based on the themes of modern life.

The Paris Review asks: who hasn't survived a tax audit, a snowstorm, a break-up, or presided over a murder? The next addictively clever Paris Review anthology is not a self-help manual; rather it is a wicked elaboration on the human effort to overcome--and instigate--trouble. Throughout these pages you will find men plagued with guilt, women burdened by history, scientists bound by passion, mothers fogged with delusion, and lovers vexed with jealousy. In the theme that encompasses every life, no protagonist--or reader --is exempt. Among those to appear: - Annie Proulx - Andre Dubus - Norman Rush - Charles Baxter - Wells Tower - Julie Orringer - Elizabeth Gilbert - Ben Okri - Rick Bass

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with the future, by the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine. “Deeply funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the most challenging of subjects.” —Esquire We’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there’s an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O’Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization’s collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. What emerges is an absorbing, funny, and deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with what’s ahead.

In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors---to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive---Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.

"A dispatch from the front lines of literature." —The Atlantic The Unprofessionals is an energetic collection celebrating the bold writers at the forefront of today’s literary world—featuring stories, essays, and poems from “America’s greatest literary journal” (Time) For more than half a century, the Paris Review has launched some of the most exciting new literary voices, from Philip Roth to David Foster Wallace. But rather than trading on nostalgia, the storied journal continues to search outside the mainstream for the most exciting emerging writers. Harmonizing a timeless literary feel with impeccable modern taste, its pages are vivid proof that the best of today’s writing more than upholds the lofty standards that built the magazine’s reputation. The Unprofessionals collects pieces from the new iteration of the Paris Review by contemporary writers who treat their art not as a profession, but as a calling. Some, like Zadie Smith, Ben Lerner, and John Jeremiah Sullivan, are already major literary presences, while others, like Emma Cline, Benjamin Nugent, and Ottessa Moshfegh, will soon be household names. A master class in contemporary writing across genres, this collection introduces the must-know voices in the modern literary scene.

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD WINNER OF THE WHITING AWARD WINNER OF THE SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING WINNTER OF THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR The first novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Trust, an exquisite and blisteringly intelligent story of a young Swedish boy, separated from his brother, who becomes a legend and an outlaw A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing west. Driven back again and again, he meets criminals, naturalists, religious fanatics, swindlers, American Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.

Gift of Christine Bombaro, Class of 1993.

The author, a poet, recounts her difficult childhood growing up in a Texas oil town.

A 2019 EISNER AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST REALITY-BASED WORK A NPR BEST BOOK OF 2018 A VULTURE BEST COMIC OF 2018 A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2018 A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018 A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2018 WINNER OF THE PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2018 GRAPHIC NOVEL CRITICS POLL In this moving graphic memoir, Eisner Award-winning writer and artist Michael Kupperman traces the life of his reclusive father—the once-world-famous Joel Kupperman, Quiz Kid. That his father is slipping into dementia—seems to embrace it, really—means that the past he would never talk about might be erased forever. Joel Kupperman became one of the most famous children in America during World War II as one of the young geniuses on the series Quiz Kids. With the uncanny ability to perform complex math problems in his head, Joel endeared himself to audiences across the country and became a national obsession. Following a childhood spent in the public eye, only to then fall victim to the same public’s derision, Joel deliberately spent the remainder of his life removed from the world at large. With wit and heart, Michael Kupperman presents a fascinating account of mid-century radio and early television history, the pro-Jewish propaganda entertainment used to counteract anti-Semitism, and the early age of modern celebrity culture. All the Answers is both a powerful father-son story and an engaging portrayal of what identity came to mean at this turning point in American history, and shows how the biggest stages in the world can overcome even the greatest of players.