Longform 2021


Book Description

Longform presents stories that subvert conventional narrative; stories about ordinary people; autobiographies; travel tales - and through these stories establish comics as a permanent feature on a reader's shelf. The anthology takes us through the streets of Rome and Kolkata, modern-day Tehran and ancient Bhutan, around-the-corner dystopias, imaginary cities and kaleidoscopic dreamscapes. ________________________________________________________________________




Longform


Book Description

Longform Annual presents stories that subvert conventional narrative; stories about ordinary people; autobiographies; travel tales - and through these stories establish comics as a permanent feature on a reader's shelf. The name 'Longform' is inspired by a Joe Sacco essay on the shrinking space to tell long graphic stories. The anthology takes us through the streets of Rome and Kolkata, modern day Tehran and ancient Bhutan, around-the-corner dystopias, imaginary cities and kaleidoscopic dreamscapes. The artists presented here include well-known names from India and elsewhere, such as Prakash Moorthy, Barroux, Venkat Shyam, Allen Shaw, as well as emerging artists.




Going Clear


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “an utterly necessary story” (The Wall Street Journal) that pulls back the curtain on the church of Scientology: one of the most secretive organizations at work today. • The Basis for the HBO Documentary. Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of the church. We meet founder L. Ron Hubbard, the highly imaginative but mentally troubled science-fiction writer, and his tough, driven successor, David Miscavige. We go inside their specialized cosmology and language. We learn about the church’s legal attacks on the IRS, its vindictive treatment of critics, and its phenomenal wealth. We see the church court celebrities such as Tom Cruise while consigning its clergy to hard labor under billion-year contracts. Through it all, Wright asks what fundamentally comprises a religion, and if Scientology in fact merits this Constitutionally-protected label.




The Looming Tower


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A “heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11” (The New York Times Book Review), this definitive history explains in gripping detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. In gripping narrative that spans five decades, Lawrence Wright re-creates firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill as he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track this new threat. Packed with new information and a deep historical perspective, The Looming Tower is a sweeping, unprecedented history of the long road to September 11.




“You're Muted"


Book Description

Through the frame of Zoom, this collection of essays examines the rapid emergence of videoconferencing in everyday life under COVID-19, its preexisting performative logic, and the ongoing implication of these practices for millions of individuals and institutions. The year 2023 marked the end of the World Health Organization's classification of the COVID-19 outbreak as a “public health emergency of international concern,” yet many of the organizational and institutional restructurings that occurred in the rapid response to the pandemic have remained firmly in place. The prevalence of videoconferencing in everyday life marks one such instance, not only highlighting the dramatic social and cultural transformations that occurred during a period of lockdowns, social distancing, and stay-at-home orders, but also serving as an index of all that has emerged as the “new normal” since March 2020. Overnight, it seemed, Zoom emerged as the default videoconferencing platform, rapidly morphing from brand name to eponymous generic. While this volume focuses predominantly on Zoom and its place in the collective imagination and daily practice of those of us whose lives are profoundly caught up in digital networks, many of these insights presented here apply to other videoconferencing platforms as well, and a supporting logic that has governed neoliberal lives since long before the first lockdowns began. The twelve chapters in this collection explore how videoconferencing platforms in general, and Zoom in particular, have provided individuals and institutions new modes of “engagement,” while at the same time reifying, normalizing, and domesticating modes of surveillance, control, and marginalization that have been part and parcel of a networked-based performative logic for nearly a century.




The Family Firm


Book Description

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Chart a child's path with less stress and more optimization for healthy habits and future success' Time From age 5 to 12, parenting decisions get more complicated and have lasting consequences. What's the right kind of school? Should they play a sport? When's the right time for a phone? Making these decisions is less about finding the specific answer and more about taking the right approach. Along with these bigger questions, Oster investigates how to navigate the complexity of day-to-day family logistics. The Family Firm is a smart and winning guide to how to think more clearly - and with less ambient stress - about the key decisions of these early years.




Major Labels


Book Description

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year “One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. He explains the history of slow jams, the genius of Shania Twain, and why rappers are always getting in trouble. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels pays in full.




What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life


Book Description

By the author of Adrien Brody, the controversial Internet piece, Marie Calloway effaces the boundary between life and narrative.




Violence and Nihilism


Book Description

Nihilism seems to be per definition linked to violence. Indeed, if the nihilist is a person who acknowledges no moral or religious authority, then what does stop him from committing any kind of crime? Dostoevsky precisely called attention to this danger: if there is no God and no immortality of the soul, then everything is permitted, even anthropophagy. Nietzsche, too, emphasised, although in different terms, the consequences deriving from the death of God and the collapse of Judeo-Christian morality. This context shaped the way in which philosophers, writers and artists thought about violence, in its different manifestations, during the 20th century. The goal of this interdisciplinary volume is to explore the various modern and contemporary configurations of the link between violence and nihilism as understood by philosophers and artists (in both literature and film).




These Precious Days


Book Description

The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.