Takes us deeper into Barbara Myerhoff's examination of the place of narrative in human life, providing a treasury of reflection, experience, and wisdom as colorful as any collection of tales

Equipment for Living: The Literary Reviews of Kenneth Burke is the largest collection of Burke's book reviews, most of them reprinted here for the first time. In these reviews, as he engages famous works of poetry, fiction, criticism, and social science from the early 20th century, Burke demonstrates the prominent methods and interests of his influential career.

Brilliant, illuminating criticism from a superstar poet—a refreshing, insightful look at how works of art, specifically poetry and popular music, can serve as essential tools for living. How can art help us make sense—or nonsense—of the world? If wrong life cannot be lived rightly, as Theodor Adorno had it, what weapons and strategies for living wrongly can art provide? With the same intelligence that animates his poetry, Michael Robbins addresses this weighty question while contemplating the idea of how strange it is that we need art at all. Ranging from Prince to Def Leppard, Lucille Clifton to Frederick Seidel, Robbins’s mastery of poetry and popular music shines in Equipment for Living. He has a singular ability to illustrate points with seemingly disparate examples (Friedrich Kittler and Taylor Swift, to W.B. Yeats and Anna Kendrick’s “Cups”). Robbins weaves a discussion on poet Juliana Spahr with the different subsets of Scandinavian black metal, illuminating subjects in ways that few scholars can achieve. Equipment for Living is also a wonderful guide to essential poetry and popular music.

What it's like to grow older in America, as revealed by an anthropologist who listened to the stories of the elderly.

Media Marathoning: Immersions in Morality is a scholarly study of the intense relationship between reader and story world, analyzing the way audiences become absorbed in a fictive text and dedicate many hours to exploring its narrative contours. Rather than view these media experiences as mindless indulgences, “media marathoning” connotes a conjoined triumph of commitment and stamina. Compared to more traditional, slower-paced media engagement patterns, media marathoning affords readers greater depth of story world engagement, maximizing the emotional and cognitive rewards of the media experience. Through immersive marathoning experiences, audiences can seriously engage with mediated questions about human nature and society, refining our orientation toward morality through internal dialogue about the story and communication with other readers as we process the meaningful journey. As digital technologies facilitate easier, user-centered access to media texts, narratives increase in complexity, and more readers seek immersive story world experiences, marathoning looks to be the new normal of media engagement. Drawing from qualitative studies of book, film, and television marathoners, along with textual analysis of commonly marathoned stories, Media Marathoning presents a holistic look at marathoning’s cultural impact.

From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival

A stunning photo essay paired with 100 stories of members gives a rare glimpse into an intentional community that has stood the test of time. Yes, it is possible to create a society where there are no rich or poor, where children and elderly are welcome, where everyone has work and no one lives alone. Meet 100 individuals from diverse backgrounds who have ventured everything to build a life together where everyone belongs and everyone can contribute. A cross-section of the Bruderhof community's international and intergenerational membership, they have pooled their income, possessions, talents, and energy to take care of one another and to reach out to others. Defying five generations of naysayers, this is a community that works. As they reflect on 100 years of community, Bruderhof members reveal why they personally have chosen this radical was of life and share insights they have gleaned along the way. With photography by acclaimed British photojournalist Danny Burrows, this book is a celebration of what is possible when people take a leap of faith and dare a change. It's a window into a lived example that will inspire and encourage anyone working to build a more just, peaceful, and sustainable future.