A compulsively readable book about the literary marriage of a great American writer and his talented yet often overlooked wife, who succumbed to madness as her husband rose to worldwide fame.

Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor’s The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge—the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud’s epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), and the curiously insistent links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and “general knowledge,” charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library. In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life.

The romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre has been celebrated as one of the greatest of the 20th century. From the beginning, their relationship was a tumultuous one, in which the couple’s excesses were as widely known as their passion for each other. Despite their love, both Scott and Zelda engaged in flirtations that threatened to tear the couple apart. But none had a more profound impact on the two—and on Scott’s writing—as the liaison between Zelda and a French aviator, Edouard Jozan. Though other biographies have written of Jozan as one of Scott’s romantic rivals, accounts of the pilot’s effect on the couple have been superficial at best. In The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal That Shaped an American Classic, Kendall Taylor examines the dalliance between the southern belle and the French pilot from a fresh perspective. Drawing on conversations and correspondence with Jozan’s daughter, as well as materials from the Jozan family archives, Taylor sheds new light on this romantic triangle. More than just a casual fling, Zelda’s tryst with Edouard affected Scott as much as it did his wife—and ultimately influenced the author’s most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. Were it not for Zelda’s affair with the pilot, Scott’s novel might be less about betrayal and more about lost illusions. Exploring the private motives of these public figures, Taylor offers new explanations for their behavior. In addition to the love triangle that included Jozan, Taylor also delves into an earlier event in Zelda’s life—a sexual assault she suffered as a teenager—one that affected her future relationships. Both a literary study and a probing look at an iconic couple’s psychological makeup, The Gatsby Affair offers readers a bold interpretation of how one of America’s greatest novels was influenced.

The New York Times bestselling finale to the Age of Madness trilogyfinds the world in an unstoppable revolution where heroes have nothing left to lose as darkness and destruction overtake everything. Chaos. Fury. Destruction. The Great Change is upon us . . . Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds. With nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies . . . while Black Calder gathers his forces and plots his vengeance. The banks have fallen, the sun of the Union has been torn down, and in the darkness behind the scenes, the threads of the Weaver's ruthless plan are slowly being drawn together . . . "No one writes with the seismic scope or primal intensity of Joe Abercrombie." —Pierce Brown For more from Joe Abercrombie, check out: The Age of Madness A Little Hatred The Trouble With Peace The Wisdom of Crowds The First Law Trilogy The Blade Itself Before They Are Hanged Last Argument of Kings Best Served Cold The Heroes Red Country The Shattered Sea Trilogy Half a King Half a World Half a War

Greider believes that those who produce accounts of their struggle with "madness" or mental illness--whether in themselves or someone they love--assert that there is sometimes "divinest sense" in madness, and that divinest sense is something of ultimate value.

The Salamander is about a group of young women traveling from all over the United States to the big city for one last adventure before settling down. You will enjoy reading this collection of stories about young flappers in the 1920s. Excerpt: "She had elected to call herself, according to the custom of the Salamanders, Doré Baxter. The two names, incongruously opposed, were like the past and the present of her wandering history: the first, brilliant, daring, alive with the imperious zest and surprise of youth; the second baldly realistic, bleak, like a distant threatening uprise of mountains."

A remembrance of one of America's greatest modern authors by his last secretary.