Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Literary History & Criticism

Maya Angelou’s memoir is a modern American classic, capturing the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life...

“Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably. . . . Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is the body of...

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD A beautifully written memoir-in-essays on fairy tales and their surprising relevance to modern life, from a Jewish woman raising Black children in the American South—based on her acclaimed Paris Review column “Happily” “One of the most...

In this brilliant selection of essays—including three new pieces—the award-winning, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from whether or not The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia...

Newly collected, revised, and expanded nonfiction from the first two decades of the twenty-first century—including many texts never previously in print—by the Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the...

In Shaggy Muses, we visit Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Flush, the golden Cocker Spaniel who danced the poet away from death, back to life and human love. We roam the wild Yorkshire moors with Emily Brontë, whose fierce Mastiff mix, Keeper, provided a safe and loving outlet for the writer’s...

A unique introduction to astrology that explores the zodiac through a literary lens, drawing lessons from celebrated authors including Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Oscar Wilde, and dozens more. AstroLit is a cosmic voyage through the lives and works of literary...

On the perimeter of Israel’s Jezreel Valley, with the Carmel mountains rising up in the west, Meir Shalev has a beloved garden, “neither neatly organized nor well kept,” as he cheerfully explains. Often covered in mud and scrapes, Shalev cultivates both nomadic plants and “house dwellers...

With their powerful blend of political and aesthetic concerns, Edward W. Said's writings have transformed the field of literary studies. This long-awaited collection of literary and cultural essays, the first since Harvard University Press published The World, the Text, and the Critic in 1983...

Gripping, insightful, and deft, The Distance Between Us by Maggie O'Farrell is a haunting story of the way our families shape our lives, from the award-winning author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait. On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NATIONAL BESTSELLER A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York...

Acclaimed New Yorker writer and author of the breakout debut bestseller The Lost City of Z, David Grann offers a collection of spellbinding narrative journalism. Whether he’s reporting on the infiltration of the murderous Aryan Brotherhood into the U.S. prison system, tracking down a chameleon...

Manu said that a woman’s dharma is to be mother, daughter, sister and wife in service of men, regardless of the caste. In modern times we call this patriarchy. In the Veda, the need to control and favour hierarchy, is an expression of an anxious mind.Hindu, Buddhist and Jain lore is full of...

“[The editors] cast their net wide, picking up some excellent stories from nontraditional sources that even avid readers of the business press may have missed.”–USA Today, on the 2001 edition Series editor Andrew Leckey and guest editor Ken Auletta have scoured the print media, consulted...

Mary Innes's classic prose translation of one of the supreme masterpieces of Latin literature "The most beautiful book in the language (my opinion and I suspect it was Shakespeare's)." -Ezra Pound Ovid drew on Greek mythology, Latin folklore and legend from ever further afield to create a series...

Karpoori Thakur, often called Jannayak, was a legendary leader from Bihar who had a significant impact on India’s politics. In early 2024, he was posthumously honoured with the Bharat Ratna in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to society. Commemorating his birth centenary, this...

A single novel, an eternal classic, established him as a founding father of American literature. Now, a century after his death, a new popular surge of interest in Herman Melville calls for Elizabeth Hardwick's rich analysis of "the whole of Melville's works, uneven as it is, and the challenging...

Riveting, elegant, and humorous, New York Times bestseller Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. Following a run of new year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about...

From one of the most brilliant writers of the twentieth century—a masterpiece of the modern American theater: a play about faith and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and black fathers and black sons. "[Baldwin] uses words as the sea uses waves." —Langston Hughes In...