Cultural Criticism

This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of "basic stories" in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it reveals that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. 

Abridged for audio. Read by the author, Clive James. With fascinating essays on towering figures from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, Cultural Amnesia is one of the crowning achievements in Clive James's illustrious career as a critic...

Robert Evans' The Kid Stays in the Picture is universally recognized as the greatest, most outrageous, and most unforgettable show business memoir ever written. The basis of an award-winning documentary film, it remains the gold standard of Hollywood storytelling. With black-and-white...

From bestselling author and provocateur Christopher Hitchens, the classic guide to the art of principled dissent and disagreement. “Hitchens is, first and last, a writer, an always exciting, often exacting, furious polemicist.” -The Boston Globe In Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher...

Bloomsbury presents About Looking by John Berger, read by John Sackville. The centenary edition, with a newly commissioned introduction by Berger’s biographer, Tom Overton. 'Instant readability . . . [Berger] makes one see [paintings] as statements or questions in a living language.' New...

'Incisive' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 'A brilliant, funny, omnivorous excavation of how technology and entertainment have warped humanity' SOPHIE GILBERT, PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST AND AUTHOR OF GIRL ON GIRL _______ From an award-winning staff writer for the Atlantic, Screen People is an eye-opening look...

Ganadora del Premio Pulitzer 2004 y reconocida como el mejor libro de ficción del siglo XXI por el New York Times, The Known Worl, de Edward P. Jones, es una novela debut de una profundidad emocional asombrosa y un poder literario inigualable, y sigue demostrando su importancia en el canon...

What happens when we consider Africa through a feminist lens and feminism through an African one? And what does it mean to centre selfhood in this journey? In this shining, wide-ranging inquiry, Minna Salami explores these questions through an unhesitating and incisive vision of African feminist...

Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews. "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned...

From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation' by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature. Self takes us with him: from the...

This program is narrated by Academy Award–winning actor, Tilda Swinton. It also contains a new afterword, read by the author. "[Tilda Swinton's] reading is sharp yet reflective, tinged with curiosity and melancholy." —The Guardian "Her ethereal, velvety voice and steady, measured delivery...

This program is read by the author. "An exuberant enthusiasm for mathematics (and life in general) shines through Dr. Hart." —The New York Times “An absolute joy to read!" —Steven Levitt, New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics "Listeners, however well versed in literature and...

From Muscle Beach to Hollywood superstar to The Governator—Ian Halperin, investigative journalist and # 1 New York Times bestselling author, reveals the untold story about the outsized and often outrageous Arnold Schwarzenegger. The former Austrian bodybuilding icon turned movie action hero...

In this breathtaking cultural history filled with exclusive, never-before-revealed details, celebrated rock journalist Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones’ infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic...

The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing its past and future, the impact it has had, and what it’s loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life. Since the late...

From a familythat inspired Big Love’s story of Bill Henricksonand his three wives, this first-ever memoir of a polygamous family captures theextraordinary workings of a unique family dynamic, and argues forthe acceptance of plural marriage as an alternative lifestyle. Readers ofCarolyn...

For all fans of John Hughes and his hit films such as National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, and Home Alone, comes Jason Diamond’s hilarious memoir of growing up obsessed with the iconic filmmaker’s movies—a preoccupation that eventually convinces Diamond he should write Hughes’...

This program has been updated with a new epilogue written and read by the author. A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like “a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing...

Всегда интересовались искусством, но не было времени его обстоятельно изучить? Все вокруг только и говорят про современное искусство, но вы в этом ничего не понимаете? В музее вы часто задаетесь одним и тем же вопросом: кто повесил эту картину вверх ногами? Представляем вам третье издание книги «Современное искусство и как перестать его бояться». После прочтения этой книги вы поймете, как смотреть современное искусство, как о нем говорить и получать удовольствие от похода на выставки.

A deeply researched warning about how the digital economy threatens artists' lives and work—the music, writing, and visual art that sustain our souls and societies—from an award-winning essayist and critic There are two stories you hear about earning a living as an artist in the digital age...