Sittenfeld’s smart debut novel about social dynamics at an exclusive boarding school remains relevant—and not just as a “coming of age novel”—a decade after it was first published.
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How the Brontës Came Out As Women
When Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell burst onto the literary scene, everyone wondered who these mysterious men could be—and if they could even really be men.
Get to Know the National Book Award Finalists for Nonfiction
This reading list features the five nonfiction nominees for the National Book Awards. The winner be announced on November 18, 2015.
Postwar New York: The Supreme Metropolis of the Present
Forty labor strikes on one day, French existentialists on the loose, and a 50-foot G.I. blowing enormous puffs of REAL smoke.
Kay Redfield Jamison, William Styron and the True Stories of Mental Illness
“For individuals who live with moods that change often and intensely, life is a tempestuous experience.”
Escape from Baghdad!: Saad Hossain’s New Satire of the Iraq War
In his debut, Saad Hossain brings a much-needed cynicism to our literature of the Iraq War. An absurdist protest novel in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Escape from Baghdad! relentlessly focuses the reader’s attention on the folly of war.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
The Top 5 Longreads of the week.
The Art and Business of Book Covers
Here are pieces I’ve enjoyed, new and old, about the art and business of book cover design.
‘Who Cares about Your Jetpack?’ On the Lack of Women Futurists
When we think about futurism, more often than not it’s robots and hoverboards that spring into our minds.
The Woes of the Corporate Anthropologist
In classical anthropology, there’s a rigid distinction between “field” and “home.” Field’s where you go to do your research, immersing yourself, sometimes at great personal risk, in a maelstrom of raw, unsorted happening. Home’s where you go to sort and tame it: catalogue it, analyze it, transform it in to something meaningful. But when the […]

