Your favorite classics in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colors of these remarkable covers make these books feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, follows narrator Nick Carraway's friendship with the enigmatic Jay Gatsby.

Nick learns that his married cousin Daisy and his neighbor Gatsby were once in love, and he agrees to help Gatsby meet with Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair. After Tom confronts Daisy and Gatsby, Daisy accidentally kills Tom's mistress with Gatsby's car. Gatsby takes the blame for the accident. Tom identifies Gatsby to his mistress's husband, who proceeds to hunt Gatsby down and kill him for revenge.

James Richardson is one of the finest poets now writing, and the best contemporary practitioner of the art of aphorism.--Publishers Weekly

Not since the appearance of W. S. Merwin's translations and adaptations of aphorisms in Asian Figures, some thirty years ago, has an American poet managed to put down so much delightful and compelling wisdom.--American Literary Review

No one theme or moral pervades these tesserae of specificity. Rather, Richardson's elegant compression invites the reader to fill in the blanks with personal experience... Richardson's knack for the quintessential, sustained for more than a hundred pages, left me satisfied yet hungry for more.-- Times Literary Supplement

Readers will be obsessed by this book; they will memorize passages, give copies to friends, proselytize. That's because Vectors so generously provides the best that poetry can offer. It is a masterpiece of practicality, beauty, and solace.-- Boston Review

James Richardson's Vectors... penetrates to the very heart of human nature. I stand looking in the mirror, alert to my own foibles, shaking my head as I tolerate what I know he knows about who I am.-- The Georgia Review

Almost every entry... introduces a new insight, provides a revelation, supplies a surprise... it is a book one wants to spend time with, a wonderfully friendly book, generous, witty and entertaining.-- Gulf Coast

Vectors is the kind of book you read, reread, thumb through, and pick up several extra copies because you want to share the joy you found in perusing it with friends.-- Barrow Street

James Richardson's Vectors is a book of subversive wonders. Stunningly precise, these brilliant aphorisms and ten-second essays show a mind assessing, reassessing, discovering, and interrogating assumptions in ways that feel diamond-sharp, at once good-natured, quietly sly at times, and always, always, very shrewd. 'It can never be satisfied, the mind, never, ' wrote Wallace Stevens. Vectors is a remarkable testament to such questing, vivid minding, as these aphorisms alight on everything from the nature of perception, to God, success, fear, shame, self-consciousness, love and friendship.--Laurie Sheck

A bold, provocative collection of essays on one of the most urgent questions of our time: What is authority when everyone has an opinion on everything?

Since her canonical 2017 essay On Liking Women, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the 1960s. With devastating wit and polemical clarity, she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, instead modeling how the left might brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers. Authority brings together Chu's critical work across a wide range of media--novels, television, theater, video games--as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1. Chu places The Phantom of the Opera within a centuries-old conflict between music and drama; questions the enduring habit of reading Octavia Butler's science fiction as a parable of slavery; and charges fellow critics like Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith with a complacent humanism.

Criticism today is having a crisis of authority--but so says every generation of critics. In two magisterial new essays, Chu offers a revised intellectual history of this perennial crisis, tracing the surprisingly political contours of criticism from its origins in the Enlightenment to our present age of social media. Rather than succumbing to an endless cycle of trumped-up emergencies, Authority makes a compelling case for how to do criticism in light of the genuine crises, from authoritarianism to genocide, that confront us today.

Co-editors Dave and Ilyssa Kyu spent six months traveling and researching the stories collected here. They gathered the best materials from public libraries, historical societies, arts and cultural organizations, museums, research centers, and national park archives. Park rangers, historians, artists, curators, educators, and local residents all offered guidance and suggestions. The goal was to discover entertaining, diverse, and engaging writings that reflect each park's essence--as well as just fun to share. Campfire Stories focuses on these six iconic national parks:

• Acadia National Park
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• Rocky Mountain National Park
• Yellowstone National Park
• Yosemite National Park
• Zion National Park

Mark Twain's Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self-aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of the first fully drawn Black fathers in American fiction. Haunted by the family he has left behind, Jim acts as father figure to Huck, the white boy who is his companion as they raft the Mississippi toward freedom. Jim is also a highly polarizing figure: he is viewed as an emblem both of Twain's alleged racism and of his opposition to racism; a diminished character inflected by minstrelsy and a powerful challenge to minstrel stereotypes; a reason for banning Huckleberry Finn and a reason for teaching it; an embarrassment and a source of pride for Black readers.

Eminent Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin probes these controversies, exploring who Jim was, how Twain portrayed him, and how the world has responded to him. Fishkin also follows Jim's many afterlives: in film, from Hollywood to the Soviet Union; in translation around the world; and in American high school classrooms today. The result is Jim as we have never seen him before--a fresh and compelling portrait of one of the most memorable Black characters in American fiction.

An engaging reassessment of the celebrated essayist and his relevance to contemporary readers

More than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the starry-eyed prophet of self-reliance has obscured a much more complicated figure who spent a lifetime wrestling with injustice, philosophy, art, desire, and suffering. James Marcus introduces readers to this Emerson, a writer of self-interrogating genius whose visionary flights are always grounded in Yankee shrewdness.

This Emerson is a rebel. He is also a lover, a friend, a husband, and a father. Having declared his great topic to be the infinitude of the private man, he is nonetheless an intensely social being who develops Transcendentalism in the company of Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Theodore Parker. And although he resists political activism early on--hoping instead for a revolution in consciousness--the burning issue of slavery ultimately transforms him from cloistered metaphysician to fiery abolitionist.

Drawing on telling episodes from Emerson's life alongside landmark essays like Self-Reliance, Experience, and Circles, Glad to the Brink of Fear reveals how Emerson shares our preoccupations with fate and freedom, race and inequality, love and grief. It shows, too, how his desire to see the world afresh, rather than accepting the consensus view, is a lesson that never grows old.

Three or four families in a country village, wrote Jane Austen to a niece, is the very thing to work on. This message from Aunt Jane is often understood as defining the breadth and depth of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and the rest of her work. The appearance of narrowness and shallowness in her novels is prized by many readers, who find escapist charm in the mannerly courtship intrigues of Austen's rural gentry. Others share Charlotte Brontë's complaint that Austen's women and men are all ladies and gentlemen, their concerns superficial, their happy endings guaranteed.

But does the sun always shine on a country village? And do those who dwell there cast no shadows? Julia Yost argues for seeing darkness in Austen's novels: the marriages that will not be happy, the heroes who are not heroic, a society that elevates the mediocre at the expense of the meritorious. Austen's wit notwithstanding, the shadow of mortality darkens with every novel until the author's own death at forty-one. She suffered under the same natural and social evils as her heroines, and a righteous hatred troubles her comedies. Yost reads Austen's six major novels and her unfinished last manuscript to show how she turned her protest into art.

Hatred, slander, hypocrisy, isolation, cynicism: As Julia Yost shows, there's a great deal of moral darkness in Jane Austen novels. Marriage is an uncertain remedy; wealth and position bring their own perils. This eye-opening study is a must-read for Austen devotees.

-R. R. Reno, editor, First Things

T.S. Eliot once wrote that Jane Austen was a genius who should have stood among the guiding spirits of nineteenth century culture, but the culture elected for the decadence of Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley to its cost. Even Eliot would have been surprised at Julia Yost's retelling of Austen's heart of darkness, which makes the great novelist of manners into an anticipation of Eliot's own disillusioned account of modern life as a waste land. If Alasdair MacIntyre once claimed Austen's work as a brilliant example of classical virtue ethics at work in the not-quite-modern age, there is also a Hobbesian side to Austen: the social conditions for human flourishing are narrow and, moreover, they are narrowing as modern commerce encroaches and returns more and more of society to the state of nature. Yost gives us a story of moral bankruptcy and collapse across all of Austen's novels, with Austen herself as a spiritual ascetic akin in some ways to Pascal. She comes not to praise with good humor English marriage and society, but to bury it, knowing that true goodness lies only in a land beyond the blessed plot of England.

-James Matthew Wilson

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease....observing a spear of summer grass.

So begins Leaves of Grass, the first great American poem and indeed, to this day, the greatest and most essentially American poem in all our national literature.

The publication of Leaves of Grass in July 1855 was a landmark event in literary history. Ralph Waldo Emerson judged the book the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed. Nothing like the volume had ever appeared before. Everything about it--the unusual jacket and title page, the exuberant preface, the twelve free-flowing, untitled poems embracing every realm of experience--was new. The 1855 edition broke new ground in its relaxed style, which prefigured free verse; in its sexual candor; in its images of racial bonding and democratic togetherness; and in the intensity of its affirmation of the sanctity of the physical world.

This Anniversary Edition captures the typeface, design and layout of the original edition supervised by Whitman himself. Today's readers get a sense of the ur-text of Leaves of Grass, the first version of this historic volume, before Whitman made many revisions of both format and style. The volume also boasts an afterword by Whitman authority David Reynolds, in which he discusses the 1855 edition in its social and cultural contexts: its background, its reception, and its contributions to literary history. There is also an appendix containing the early responses to the volume, including Emerson's letter, Whitman's three self-reviews, and the twenty other known reviews published in various newspapers and magazines.

This special volume will be a must-have keepsake for fans of Whitman and lovers of American poetry.

One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick's enlightening and entertaining tour through Melville's classic. As he did in his National Book Award-winning bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick brings a sailor's eye and an adventurer's passion to unfolding the story behind an epic American journey. He skillfully navigates Melville's world and illuminates the book's humor and unforgettable characters--finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times. An ideal match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? will start conversations, inspire arguments, and make a powerful case that this classic tale waits to be discovered anew.

Gracefully written with an] infectious enthusiasm...--New York Times Book Review

A shimmering jewel of a book about writing from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy, to publish alongside her new work of nonfiction, The Cost of Living.

Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay Why I Write. Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter--political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm--and Levy's newest work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective.

As she struggles to balance womanhood, motherhood, and her writing career, Levy identifies some of the real-life experiences that have shaped her novels, including her family's emigration from South Africa in the era of apartheid; her teenage years in the UK where she played at being a writer in the company of builders and bus drivers in cheap diners; and her theater-writing days touring Poland in the midst of Eastern Europe's economic crisis, where she observed how a soldier tenderly kissed the women in his life goodbye.

Spanning continents (Africa and Europe) and decades (we meet the writer at seven, fifteen, and fifty), Things I Don't Want to Know brings the reader into a writer's heart.

First, there was The Gilgamesh.

Then... the Bhagavad-Gita

Then... the Torah, the New Testament, the Koran

Then... the Book of Mormon, Dianetics, I'm OK You're OK.

And now... The Book of the Subgenius (How to Prosper in the Coming Weird Times)

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

• The New York Edition text of the novel--the one that had James's final authority--newly and fully annotated by Jonathan Warren.

• A full introduction, compositional history, and textual notes by Jonathan Warren.

• Revised and expanded contextual materials, topically organized to promote classroom discussion: James, the Ghost Story, and the Supernatural, James on The Turn of the Screw, Other Possible Sources for The Turn of the Screw, and, new to the Third Edition, Adaptations and Illustrations.

• Thirty-two critical assessments--from early reactions to the present day--sixteen of them new to the Third Edition.

• A chronology and suggestions for further reading.

About the Series

Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

From their acclaimed biographer, a final, powerful book about how Emerson, Thoreau, and William James forged resilience from devastating loss, changing the course of American thought

In Three Roads Back, Robert Richardson, the author of magisterial biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, tells the connected stories of how these foundational American writers and thinkers dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers. For Emerson, it was the death of his young wife and, eleven years later, his five-year-old son; for Thoreau, it was the death of his brother; and for James, it was the death of his beloved cousin Minnie Temple. Filled with rich biographical detail and unforgettable passages from the journals and letters of Emerson, Thoreau, and James, these vivid and moving stories of loss and hard-fought resilience show how the writers' responses to these deaths helped spur them on to their greatest work, influencing the birth and course of American literature and philosophy.

In reaction to his traumatic loss, Emerson lost his Unitarian faith and found solace in nature. Thoreau, too, leaned on nature and its regenerative power, discovering that death is the law of new life, an insight that would find expression in Walden. And James, following a period of panic and despair, experienced a redemptive conversion and new ideas that would drive his work as a psychologist and philosopher. As Richardson shows, all three emerged from their grief with a new way of seeing, one shaped by a belief in what Emerson called the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

An inspiring book about resilience and the new growth and creativity that can stem from devastating loss, Three Roads Back is also an extraordinary account of the hidden wellsprings of American thought.

Staying married in this day and age takes a whole different mindset, and this book gives an intimate and honest look at the inner workings of their strong union.--Gia Peppers, award-winning journalist and host

After twelve years of marriage, twenty years together, and four kids, Devale and Khadeen Ellis have been through a lot. They've loved their way through a long-distance relationship, financial instability, parenthood, Khadeen's near-death, and their near-divorce, chronicling their day-to-day life with their boys online. After much trial and error, they hit upon one surprising, essential truth: If you're looking for a healthy relationship and a fulfilling life, focus on your partner's needs instead of your wants. Choosing service over selfishness will not only make your relationship stronger, but it will help you achieve your own goals and build a legacy together.

With their trademark transparency and humor, Khadeen and Devale share the messy, behind-the-scenes work of what it takes to succeed and support one another in their search for individual purpose while growing in their marriage. They discuss family, parenting, sex and intimacy, finances, and commitment, with honest advice threaded through their stories, such as:

- Stop comparing yourselves to other couples and make your own rules.
- Learn how to function as a team.
- Keep talking about sex.
- The kids ain't first.

The Ellises might not have all the answers, but they do know that good love takes friendship, grace, and service. Their personal and relatable truths will inspire you to be the kind of partner you want to be so you can build a supportive, enduring relationship.

The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, days from turning twenty-six years old, and returning to New York for the publication of his fourth book, Tales of the Jazz Age. A spokesman for America's carefree younger generation, Fitzgerald found a home in the glamorous and reckless streets of New York. Here, in the final incredible months of 1922, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald drank and quarreled and partied amid financial scandals, literary milestones, car crashes, and celebrity disgraces.

Yet the Fitzgeralds' triumphant return to New York coincided with another event: the discovery of a brutal double murder in nearby New Jersey, a crime made all the more horrible by the farce of a police investigation--which failed to accomplish anything beyond generating enormous publicity for the newfound celebrity participants. Proclaimed the crime of the decade even as its proceedings dragged on for years, the Mills-Hall murder has been wholly forgotten today. But the enormous impact of this bizarre crime can still be felt in The Great Gatsby, a novel Fitzgerald began planning that autumn of 1922 and whose plot he ultimately set within that fateful year.

Careless People is a unique literary investigation: a gripping double narrative that combines a forensic search for clues to an unsolved crime and a quest for the roots of America's best loved novel. Overturning much of the received wisdom of the period, Careless People blends biography and history with lost newspaper accounts, letters, and newly discovered archival materials. With great wit and insight, acclaimed scholar of American literature Sarah Churchwell reconstructs the events of that pivotal autumn, revealing in the process new ways of thinking about Fitzgerald's masterpiece.

Interweaving the biographical story of the Fitzgeralds with the unfolding investigation into the murder of Hall and Mills, Careless People is a thrilling combination of literary history and murder mystery, a mesmerizing journey into the dark heart of Jazz Age America.

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK 2022

When I think about the fact that society, a nation, has sentenced me to death, all I can do is turn inside myself, to the place in my heart that wants so desperately to feel human, still connected to this world, as if I have a purpose.

The moving memoir of a Death Row inmate who discovers Buddhism and becomes an inspirational role model for fellow inmates, guards, and a growing public

In 1990, while serving a sentence in San Quentin for armed robbery, Jarvis Jay Masters was implicated as an accessory in the murder of a prison guard. A 23-year-old Black man, Jarvis was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. While in the maximum security section of Death Row, using the only instrument available to him--a ball-point pen filler--Masters's astounding memoir is a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit and the talent of a fine writer.

Offering us scenes from his life that are at times poignant, revelatory, frightening, soul-stirring, painful, funny and uplifting, That Bird Has My Wings tells the story of the author's childhood with parents addicted to heroin, an abusive foster family, a life of crime and imprisonment, and the eventual embracing of Buddhism. Masters's story drew the attention of luminaries in the world of American Buddhism, including Pema Chodron, who wrote a story about him for O Magazine and offers a foreword to the book.

Thirty-two years after his conviction, Masters is still on Death Row. A growing movement of people believe Masters is innocent, and are actively working within the legal system to free him.