BIG THOUGHTS

What’s a novelist supposed to do with contemporary culture? And what’s contemporary culture sup­posed to do with novelists? In The Ecstasy of Influence, Jonathan Lethem, tangling with what he calls the “white elephant” role of the writer as public intellectual, arrives at an astonishing range of answers. Learn More

The Electric Information Age Book explores the nine-year window of mass-market publishing in the sixties and seventies when formerly backstage players designers, graphic artists, editors stepped into the spotlight to produce a series of exceptional books. Learn More

War is a fact of human nature. As long as we exist, it exists. That's how the argument goes. Learn More

The philosophical roots of Sartre’s anti-colonial stance. Learn More

A student's introduction to the historical context, key themes and current debates in Utilitarianism. Learn More

Nicholson Baker, who "writes like no one else in America" (Newsweek), here assembles his best short pieces from the last fifteen years. Learn More