Poems about sex, marriage, and the desire for a child from a “scary-cool and edgy-smart” poet (J. D. McClatchy). The frank, raw lyrics of Dana Goodyear’s second collection draw on the scenery of Los Angeles—the teenagers, vagrants, pornographers—and the beautiful decay that serves as an insistent reminder to them all. The poems are unsparing but tender, candid but sly, and open to the force of nature on an individual human life. from “Wildfire” We want this. The end to sleeping, the bittersweet arousal, the peeling back, the soft bath in resin, the release. It can’t come quick enough, the hot touch that breaks the crust and lets us go. Hear it now: a crackling, as the woods begin to sing alongside the birds.

A look at the poetry of one of America’s most populous and fascinating cities, with poems spanning from 1942 to 2012

This fascinating anthology collects notable New Yorker pieces from the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century—including work by James Baldwin, Pauline Kael, Sylvia Plath, Roger Angell, and Muriel Spark—alongside new assessments of the 1960s by some of today’s finest writers. Here are real-time accounts of these years, brought to immediate and profound life: Calvin Trillin reports on the integration of Southern universities, E. B. White and John Updike wrestle with the enormity of the Kennedy assassination, and Jonathan Schell travels with American troops into the jungles of Vietnam. Some of the truly timeless works of American journalism came out of The New Yorker that decade, including Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, all excerpted here. The arts, too, underwent an extraordinary transformation, with the magazine publishing such indelible short story masterpieces as John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and John Updike’s “A & P”; iconic poems by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton; and in-depth profiles of crucial cultural figures like Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Muhammad Ali (when he was still Cassius Clay). This collection of groundbreaking pieces is also given contemporary context by current New Yorker writers, resulting in an incomparable portrait of a truly galvanizing era. Including contributions by Renata Adler • Roger Angell • Hannah Arendt • James Baldwin • Truman Capote • Rachel Carson • John Cheever • Mavis Gallant • Pauline Kaell • Jane Kramer • John McPhee • Sylvia Plath • Muriel Spark • Calvin Trillin • John Updike • E. B. White And featuring new perspectives by Jennifer Egan • Malcolm Gladwell • Dana Goodyear • Adam Gopnik • Jill Lepore • Larissa MacFarquhar • Evan Osnos • George Packer • Kelefa Sanneh Praise for The 60s: The Story of a Decade “The third installment in the esteemed magazine’s superb decades series . . . The contributor list is an embarrassment of riches. . . . The hits continue. Bring on the '70s.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[The 60s] deserves a lasting place on one’s shelves. Like its predecessors in the series, this collection is a time capsule and a keeper.”—Booklist

John Milton is, next to William Shakespeare, the most influential English poet, a writer whose work spans an incredible breadth of forms and subject matter. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton celebrates this author’s genius in a thoughtfully assembled book that provides new modern-spelling versions of Milton’s texts, expert commentary, and a wealth of other features that will please even the most dedicated students of Milton’s canon. Edited by a trio of esteemed scholars, this volume is the definitive Milton for our time. In these pages you will find all of Milton’s verse, from masterpieces such as Paradise Lost–widely viewed as the finest epic poem in the English language–to shorter works such as the Nativity Ode, Lycidas,, A Masque and Samson Agonistes. Milton’s non-English language sonnets, verses, and elegies are accompanied by fresh translations by Gordon Braden. Among the newly edited and authoritatively annotated prose selections are letters, pamphlets, political tracts, essays such as Of Education and Areopagitica, and a generous portion of his heretical Christian Doctrine. These works reveal Milton’s passionate advocacy of controversial positions during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth and Restoration periods. With his deep learning and the sensual immediacy of his language, Milton creates for us a unique bridge to the cultures of classical antiquity and medieval and Renaissance Christianity. With this in mind, the editors give careful attention to preserving the vibrant energy of Milton’s verse and prose, while making the relatively unfamiliar aspects of his writing accessible to modern readers. Notes identify the old meanings and roots of English words, illuminate historical contexts–including classical and biblical allusions–and offer concise accounts of the author’s philosophical and political assumptions. This edition is a consummate work of modern literary scholarship.

"A work of art as rich and subtle and unnerving as anything its author has ever done" (New Yorker), The Loved One is Evelyn Waugh's cutting satire of 1940s California and the Anglo-American cultural divide. Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday--and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.

The popular New Yorker writer combines the style of Mary Roach with the on-the-ground food savvy of Anthony Bourdain. Dana Goodyear’s narrative debut is a highly entertaining, revelatory look into the raucous, strange, fascinatingly complex world of contemporary American food culture. At once an uproarious behind-the-scenes adventure and a serious attempt to understand the implications of an emergent new cuisine, it introduces a cast of compelling and unexpected characters—from Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold, to a high-end Las Vegas purveyor of rare and exotic ingredients, to the traffickers and promoters of raw milk and other forbidden products, to the hottest chefs who rely on them—all of whom, along with today’s diners, are changing the face of American eating. Ultimately, Goodyear looks at what we eat, and tells us who we are. As she places all of this within a vivid historical and cultural framework, she shows how these gathering culinary trends may eventually shape the way all Americans dine. What emerges is a picture of America at a moment of transition, designing the future as it reimagines the past.