High Art

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and modern thinkers challenged the old orthodoxies, offering thrilling new perspectives that suddenly felt radical—and too dangerous for women.

A group of criminals in 1946 pull off the heist of the century, stealing a dozen priceless works of art from a Boston museum. But while the thieves get caught, the art is never found. Forty years later, the last surviving thief gets out of jail and goes hunting for the loot, involving some innocent college students in his dangerous plan—and twenty-eight years after that, in the present day, the former college kids, now all grown up, are drawn back into danger as the still-missing art tempts a deadly new generation of treasure hunters.

Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty - a poet, a New Yorker, and an American - keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work.

From anonymous 10th-century troubadours to world-renowned 20th-century composers, this comprehensive commentary explores the roots of the most influential music genres of our time. Essential listening for students and lovers of great music, A History of Music in Western Civilization features music performed by world-renowned orchestras and enlightening discussions by 15 prominent music authorities, including Christopher Hogwood, Dr. Wilfrid Mellers, and others.

Everyone knows Steve Madden's name and his shoes, but few are familiar with his story. Over the past 30 years, Steve Madden has taken his eponymous shoe company from the fledgling start-up he founded with a mere $1,100 to a global, multibillion-dollar brand. But Madden's mistakes, from his battle with addiction to the financial shortcuts that landed him in prison, are as important to his story as his most iconic shoes. In this raw, intimate, and ultimately inspiring book, Madden holds nothing back as he shares what it took to get here and the lessons he's learned along the way.

Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today's left, he's remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout—a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values.

Dream of having a flourishing and fulfilling practice as a healer, but are wrestling with the “business of healing”? Countless healers today are stuck in jobs they hate—doing what they love at night, in fits and starts. Others are practicing their craft but struggling to make ends meet. And some never get off the ground because they have no idea how and where to start. Sound familiar? What do they all have in common? They’re far better healers than businesspeople. Yet, to succeed in a healing profession today, you have to be BOTH. Enter The High Income healer, written by Jill K. ...

Alexandra Petri's US History contains a lost (invented!) history of America. (A history for people disappointed that the only president whose weird sex letters we have is Warren G. Harding.) Petri's "historical fan fiction" draws on real events and completely absurd fabrications to create a laugh-out-loud, irreverent takedown of our nation's complicated past. A witty, absurdist satire of the last 500 years, Alexandra Petri's US History is the fake textbook you never knew you needed.

Plagued by the suicides of both his siblings, heir to alcohol and drug abuse, divorce and economic ruin, James Brown lived a life clouded by addiction, broken promises and despair. In The Los Angeles Diaries, he reveals his struggle for survival, mining his past to present the inspiring story of his redemption. Beautifully written and limned with dark humor, these 12 deeply confessional, interconnected chapters address personal failure, heartbreak, the trials of writing for Hollywood, and the life-shattering events that finally convinced Brown that he must "change or die".

In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz examines the history behind the infamous radio play. Did it really spawn a wave of mass hysteria? Schwartz is the first to examine the hundreds of letters sent directly to Orson Welles after the broadcast. He draws upon them, and hundreds more sent to the FCC, to recapture the roiling emotions of a bygone era, and his findings challenge conventional wisdom. Relatively few listeners believed an actual attack was underway.

Songs that sell the most copies become hits, but some of those hits become something more—iconic recordings that not only inspire a generation but also change the direction of music. In Anatomy of 55 More Songs, based on his column for the Wall Street Journal, music journalist and historian Marc Myers tells the story behind fifty-five rock, pop, R&B, country, and soul-gospel hits through intimate interviews with the artists who wrote and recorded them.

Are you ready to stop spinning your wheels and start growing intentionally? In "Intentional Growth: Small Steps to Big Change," you’ll discover how to take control of your progress and achieve the success you’ve been striving for—one actionable step at a time. This isn’t just another self-help book full of clichés. It’s a practical, no-nonsense guide packed with tools, stories, and strategies to help you: Clarify your goals and focus on what truly matters. Overcome setbacks by building resilience and turning challenges into opportunities. Create feedback loops that drive constant...

During the upheavals of 2007-9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of a Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill, and author of Lombard Street, the still-canonical guide to stopping a run on the banks, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that - decades later - inspired the radical responses to the world's worst financial crises.

Gina Frangello spent her early adulthood trying to outrun a youth marked by poverty and violence. Now a long-married wife and devoted mother, the better life she carefully built is emotionally upended by the death of her closest friend. Soon, awakened to fault lines in her troubled marriage, Frangello is caught up in a recklessly passionate affair, leading a double life while continuing to project the image of the perfect family. When her secrets are finally uncovered, both her home and her identity will implode, testing the limits of desire, responsibility, love, and forgiveness.

Filled with logical yet counterintuitive answers to ordinary and extraordinary problems - whether it be buying a new home or pivoting a failing business model - Mudd's HEAD (High Efficiency Analytic Decision-making) methodology provides listeners with a battle-tested set of guiding principles that promise to bring order to even the most chaotic problems, all in five practical steps.

Elizabeth continues her transformation into Damon’s lifestyle, growing and embracing her desires while still hoping for something more than an arrangement. Damon comes face-to-face with emotions he has buried for years, believing the only way he can survive is to maintain control. A series of incidents finds them both beginning to deal with their emotions as they look for a middle ground. After casting Elizabeth aside, Damon realizes he may lose her and goes after her to bring her home. Pleasure is there for both, but the pain is emotional, with Damon trying to let go of some of the ...

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America's first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Along Comes the Association is the story of how Russ Giguere and his fellow band members in the legendary and influential pop group The Association came together to create unparalleled music, unique to the time and place, and never again to be repeated.

Solitude is the inspirational core for many writers, artists, and thinkers. Alone with our thoughts, we can make discoveries that matter not only to us but to others. To be solitary is not only to draw sustenance from being alone, but to know that our ultimate responsibility is not only to our partner or our own offspring, but to a larger community. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling.

Xiaolu Guo has been lauded as a "voice . . . speaking with full freedom" (Wall Street Journal), which has made her one of the most acclaimed Chinese-born writers of her generation. Her new memoir, Radical, is an exploration of a city, an electrically honest rendering of what it means to be an outsider, and the sojourn that upended her sense of self as a woman, partner, mother, and artist.