*Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction *Shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award *Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize One of The Times UK’s Best Memoirs of 2018, BuzzFeed’s Best Nonfiction of 2018, Autostraddle’s Best LGBT Books of 2018, and 52 Insight’s Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2018 A “no-holds-barred examination of masculinity” (BuzzFeed) and violence from award-winning author Thomas Page McBee. In this “refreshing and radical” (The Guardian) narrative, Thomas McBee, a trans man, sets out to uncover what makes a man—and what being a “good” man even means—through his experience training for and fighting in a charity boxing match at Madison Square Garden. A self-described “amateur” at masculinity, McBee embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of gender in society, examining sexism, toxic masculinity, and privilege. As he questions the limitations of gender roles and the roots of masculine aggression, he finds intimacy, hope, and even love in the experience of boxing and in his role as a man in the world. Despite personal history and cultural expectations, “Amateur is a reminder that the individual can still come forward and fight” (The A.V. Club). “Sharp and precise, open and honest,” (Women’s Review of Books), McBee’s writing asks questions “relevant to all people, trans or not” (New York Newsday). Through interviews with experts in neuroscience, sociology, and critical race theory, he constructs a deft and thoughtful examination of the role of men in contemporary society. Amateur is a graceful and uncompromising look at gender by a fearless, fiercely honest writer.

Can the criticism of literature and culture ever be completely professionalized? Does criticism retain an amateur impulse even after it evolves into a highly specialized discipline enshrined in the university? The Critic as Amateur brings leading and emerging scholars together to explore the role of amateurism in literary studies. While untrained reading has always been central to arenas beyond the academy – book clubs, libraries, used bookstores – its role in the making of professional criticism is often disavowed or dismissed. This volume, the first on the critic as amateur, restores the links between expertise, autodidactic learning and hobbyist pleasure by weaving literary criticism in and out of the university. Our contributors take criticism to the airwaves, through the culture of early cinema, the small press, the undergraduate classroom and extracurricular writing groups. Canonical critics are considered alongside feminist publishers and queer intellectuals. The Critic as Amateur is a vital book for readers invested in the disciplinary history of literary studies and the public role of the humanities. It is also a crucial resource for anyone interested in how literary criticism becomes a richly diverse yet shared discourse in the 20th and 21st centuries.

A radical manifesto about doing what you love Andy Merrifield offers a passionate tribute to the revolutionary spirit of the amateur—a figure who thinks outside the box, takes risks, dreams the impossible dream, seeks independence, and carves out a new world. Merrifield celebrates such square pegs as Charles Baudelaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edward Said, Guy Debord, Hannah Arendt, and Jane Jacobs, each of whom shows us a path of unconventional wisdom and freedom. The Amateur advocates urgently for the liberated life, one that creates the space to question authority.

Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement. Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors. In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented. The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions. Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.

Arthur J. Raffles is a character created in the 1890s by E. W. Hornung, brother-in-law to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Holmes - he is a ""gentleman thief,"" living at the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries. He is called the ""Amateur Cracksman,"" and often, at first, differentiates between himself and the ""professors"" - professional criminals from the lower classes. As Holmes has Dr. Watson to chronicle his adventures, Raffles has Harry ""Bunny"" Manders - a former schoolmate saved from disgrace and suicide by Raffles, whom Raffles persuaded to accompany him on a burglary. While Raffles often takes advantage of Manders' relative innocence, and sometimes treats him with a certain amount of contempt, he knows that Manders' bravery and loyalty are to be relied on utterly.

What if your very existence threatened the heart of power? It's the 21st century, right now, in America and on the surface everything looks just fine. But the commonly accepted image of society is an illusion. A clandestine force usurps the desires of individuals, and those who won't conform must be crushed to preserve the appearance of free will. Aranka is just a sixteen-year-old girl but a fluke in her genes makes her a threat. Those with power will stop at nothing to protect their supremacy. She is kidnapped by doctors who claim she's sick but it's only a matter of time before it's her turn to die. A diverse band of outlaws from every corner of the globe represent the only hope of resistance. Kenyen, a young doctor, infiltrates to the heart of the oppression but he can't stop the terror. He just wants to save one life. In the process he uncovers "the Seed," the first flicker of hope in a thousand years. The Soul and the Seed is the first book in The Kyrennei Series - a dystopian fantasy thriller of today's world. The second book is The Fear and the Solace.

In their youth, Manni and Franzi, together with their brothers, Ziggy and Sebastian, captured Germany's collective imagination as the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers -- one of the most popular vaudeville acts of the old Weimar days. The ensuing years have, however, found the Jewish brothers estranged and ensconced in various occupations as the war is drawing near its end and a German surrender is imminent. Manni is traveling through the Ruhr Valley with Albert Speer, who is intent on subverting Hitler's apocalyptic plan to destroy the German industrial heartland before the Allies arrive; Franzi has become inextricably attached to Heinrich Himmler's entourage as astrologer and masseur; and Ziggy and Sebastian have each been employed in pursuits that threaten to compromise irrevocably their own safety and ideologies. Now, with the Russian noose tightening around Berlin and the remnants of the Nazi government fleeing north to Flensburg, the Loerber brothers are unexpectedly reunited. As Himmler and Speer vie to become the next Führer, deluded into believing they can strike a bargain with Eisenhower and escape their criminal fates, the Loerbers must employ all their talents -- and whatever magic they possess -- to rescue themselves and one another. Deftly written and darkly funny, Germania is an astounding adventure tale -- with subplots involving a hidden cache of Nazi gold, Hitler's miracle U-boats, and Speer's secret plan to live out his days hunting walrus in Greenland -- and a remarkably imaginative novel from a gifted new writing talent.