Nothing in the annals of sports has aroused more passion than the heavyweight fights in New York in 1936 and 1938 between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling — bouts that symbolized the hopes, hatreds, and fears of a world moving toward total war. Acclaimed jou
American author John Horne Burns (1916–1953) led a brief and controversial life, and as a writer, transformed many of his darkest experiences into literature. Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach Engl
The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl sta
Much has been written about priests and pedophilia, but not about particular priests and their particular victims. This is the story about Father Bernard Bissonnette, a priest from Grosvenordale, Connecticut and the fifty-year path of destruction and hear
This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel takes place in the space of four days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man who is constantly pla
A New York Times Notable BookDaring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that
White Girls, Hilton Als’s first book since The Women fourteen years ago, finds one of The New Yorker's boldest cultural critics deftly weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and hist
The early fiction of one of the nation’s most celebrated writers, Truman Capote, as he takes his first bold steps into the canon of American literature
Recently rediscovered in the archives of the New York Public Library, these short stories provide
With tremendous new stories from Steven Millhauser and Roddy Doyle, an epic, genre-shattering novella from Hilton Als, and a really excellent special section on Norway's finest writers (featuring not just Per Petterson but also Kid Icarus and a woman name
