Literature

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

An entertaining tour of Old English words for animals, from the author of The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English, which Neil Gaiman called “a marvelous book”

A beautifully illustrated guide to over seventy-five important journeys in world literature, spanning more than thirty countries and twenty-five hundred years

An entertaining and illuminating collection of weird, wonderful, and downright baffling words from the origins of English—and what they reveal about the lives of the earliest English speakers

The first book in English to examine Leon Battista Alberti’s major literary works in Latin and Italian, which are often overshadowed by his achievements in architecture

A captivating portrait of the poet and the scientist who shared an enchanted view of nature

A compelling personal introduction to the life and work of Nobel Prize–winning writer Czesław Miłosz from his fellow Polish exile and acclaimed writer Eva Hoffman

The first book-length selection from the extraordinary unpublished diary of the late-Victorian writer “Michael Field”—the pen name of two female coauthors and romantic partners

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism

A history of the chapter from its origins in antiquity to today