Bøger udgivet af Alfred A. Knopf

The wrenching, and inspiring, story of a fourteen-year-old sentenced to life in prison, of the extraordinary relationship that developed between him and the woman he shot, and of his release after twenty-six years of imprisonment through the efforts of America's greatest contemporary legal activist, Bryan Stevenson.Here is the story of a poor black kid from the toughest neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, who at age eleven began "jacking" (stealing) cars with his friends. At age thirteen he shot a white woman in the jaw during a botched mugging. For that crime, and because of his earlier record as a juvenile delinquent, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole--essentially a death sentence. Forgotten by society, tortured by prison guards, held in solitary confinement for eighteen years, he was nonetheless able to accomplish a near-miraculous release from the unimaginable hell of the U.S. correctional system. Unable to afford legal help, through his own determination and strategic thinking, some serendipity, and the all-important help of complete strangers, including Bryan Stevenson and, perhaps most extraordinarily, the woman he shot, he was able eventually to gain his freedom. Full of unexpected twists and turns, the narrative is at times harrowing, disturbing, and painful, but, ultimately it is astoundingly evocative of the power of human will.

The world of comedy and comedians of the last five decades, by the man the New York Times calls "a comic institution himself," the only comedian (twenty-six years in stand-up) to have made Elie Wiesel laugh, as well as having appeared on The Tonight Show (140 times, second only to Bob Hope, but who's counting), director of TV comedy series Mad About You, Seinfeld, Friends, Weeds and Curb Your Enthusiasm.From David Steinberg, a rabbi's son from Winnipeg, Canada, who at age fifteen enrolled at Hebrew Theological College in Chicago (the rabbinate wasn't for him) and four years later, entered the master's program in English literature at the University of Chicago, until he saw Lenny Bruce, the "Blue Boy" of Comedy, the coolest guy Steinberg had ever seen, and joined Chicago's Second City improvisational group, becoming, instead, the comedian's comedian, director, actor, working with, inspired by, teaching, and learning from the most celebrated, admired, complicated comedians, then and now--a funny, moving, provocative, insightful look into the soul, wit, and bite of comedy and comedians--a universe unto itself--of the last half-century.From the greats: George Burns, Lenny Bruce, Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball, Mel Brooks, and Carl Reiner, et al., to the newer greats: Carol Burnett, Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Billy Crystal, Bob Newhart, and the man for all comedy, Martin (Marty) Short; to the greats of right now: Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Wanda Sykes; and more . . .Steinberg, through stories, reminiscences, tales of directing, touring, performing, and, through the comedians themselves talking (from more than 75 interviews), makes clear why he loves comedy and comedians who have been by his side in his work, and in his life, for more than sixty years. Here are: Will Ferrell, Whoopi Goldberg, Tina Fey, Mike Myers, Ellen DeGeneres, Groucho himself and the greatest of them all (at least of the last half century), Jonathan Winters . . .

Help throw Sun a birthday celebration in this hilarious picture book complete with nonfiction facts. Great for readers of Moonshot and for the budding astronomer in your life.The planets are throwing Sun a birthday party! Mercury wants to thank Sun for how close they are. (Being the closest planet has its perks.) Earth enjoys Sun''s warmth. And all the planets want to celebrate Sun''s magnetic personality.But party planning takes work. Do they even have room for all of Jupiter''s moon? Don''t space out. It''s time for this star-studded event!Blast off with Jan Carr and Pura Belpre Award-winning illustrator Juana Medina''s quick-witted and fact-filled picture book about the solar system and all of its (inter)stellar inhabitants.

Updated for the first time in decades, this unparalleled reference work is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to the birds of North America and now includes the latest information on conservation status and the effects of climate change--from the world''s most trusted name in birding, beloved by millions of backyard enthusiasts and experts alike“If you’ve ever wondered what birds show up in your backyard or which species you see when your family is on vacation, then this beautiful, freshly updated bird guide from the National Audubon Society is perfect for you.” —Portland Book ReviewDeveloped by the creators of the best-selling Audubon field guides, this handsome volume is the result of a collaboration among leading scientists, scholars, taxonomic and field experts, photo editors, and designers. An indispensable reference, it covers more than 800 species, with over 3,500 full-color photographs of birds in their natural habitat, often with four or five images of each species. For ease of use, the book includes a glossary, an index, and a ribbon marker, and is arranged according to the American Ornithological Society''s latest Checklist of North and Middle American Birds—with birds sorted by taxonomic orders and grouped by family, so that related species are presented together. Range maps, reflecting the impact of climate change, accompany nearly every entry, along with a physical description and information on voice, nesting, habitat, and similar species. This guide also includes an important new category on conservation status and essays by leading scholars in each field who provide holistic insights into the world of birds. Whether trying to determine which owl is interrupting your dinner or successfully identifying all of the warblers that arrive in spring, readers will come to rely on this work of remarkable breadth, depth, and elegance. It is a must-have reference for the library of any birder, and is poised to become the number one guide in the field.

A stirring, witty, and poignant glimpse into the bewildering American immigrant experience from someone who has lived it. Hakakian''s "love letter to the nation that took her in [is also] a timely reminder of what millions of human beings endure when they uproot their lives to become Americans by choice" (The Boston Globe).Into the maelstrom of unprecedented contemporary debates about immigrants in the United States, this perfectly timed book gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like. Written as a "guide" for the newly arrived, and providing "practical information and advice," Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, reveals what those who settle here love about the country, what they miss about their homes, the cruelty of some Americans, and the unceasing generosity of others. She captures the texture of life in a new place in all its complexity, laying bare both its beauty and its darkness as she discusses race, sex, love, death, consumerism, and what it is like to be from a country that is in America''s crosshairs. Her tenderly perceptive and surprisingly humorous account invites us to see ourselves as we appear to others, making it possible for us to rediscover our many American gifts through the perspective of the outsider. In shattering myths and embracing painful contradictions that are unique to this place, A Beginner''s Guide to America is Hakakian''s candid love letter to America.

The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States-the most significant civil-rights breakthrough of the new millennium. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage's unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable. It is a story that begins in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequence of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. In the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution. Over 25 years, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts and the epic face-off over California's Proposition 8, and, finally, to the landmark Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. From churches to hedge funds, no corner of American life went untouched. This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict through courtrooms and war rooms, bedrooms and boardrooms, to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other. Following a cast of characters that includes those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the traditional definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, The Engagement is certain to become a seminal book on the modern culture wars.

A bountiful group of poems--direct, honest, and revelatory--that reflect on language, nature, old age, young love, Judaism, and our current politics, from one of our most read and admired poets"Words are my business," Marge Piercy begins her twentieth collection of poetry, a glance back at a lifetime of learning, loving, grieving, and fighting for the disenfranchised, and a look forward at what the future holds for herself, her family and friends, and her embattled country. In the opening section, Piercy tells of her childhood in Detroit, with its vacant lots and scrappy children, the bike that gave her wings, her ambition at fourteen to "gobble" down all knowledge, and a too-early marriage ("I put on my first marriage / like a girdle my skinny body / didn't need"). We then leap into the present, her "twilight zone," where she is "learning to be quiet," learning to give praise despite it all. There are funny poems about medicine ads with their dire warnings, and some possible plusses about being dead: "I'll never do another load of laundry . . ." There is "comfort in old bodies / coming together," in a partner's warmth--"You're always warm: warm hands / smooth back sleek as a Burmese cat./ Sunny weather outside and in."Piercy has long been known for her political poems, and here we have her thoughts on illegal immigrants, dying languages, fraught landscapes, abortion, President-speak. She examines her nonbeliever's need for religious holidays and spiritual depth, and the natural world is appreciated throughout. On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light is yet more proof of Piercy's love and mastery of language--it is moving, stimulating, funny, and full of the stuff of life.

A father and husband's meditation on love, adolescence, and the mysterious mechanisms of poetic creation, from the acclaimed poet.The poet's art is revealed in stages in this "making-of" book, where we watch as poems take shape--first as dreams or memories, then as drafts, and finally as completed works set loose on the world. In the long poem "Must We Mean What We Say," a woman reader narrates in prose the circumstances behind poems and snippets of poems she receives in letters from a stranger. Who made up whom? Chiasson, an acclaimed poetry critic, has invented a remarkable structure where the reader and a poet speak to one another, across the void of silence and mystery. He is also the father of teenaged sons, and this volume continues the autobiographical arc of his prior, celebrated volumes. One long section is about the age of thirteen and the dawning of desire, while the title poem looks at the crucial age of fifteen and the existential threat of climate change and gun violence, which alters the calculus of adolescence. Though the outlook is bleak, these poems register the glories of our moment: that there are places where boys can kiss each other and not be afraid; that small communities are rousing and taking care of each other; that teenagers have mobilized for a better world. All of these works emerge from the secretive imagination of a father as he measures his own adolescence against that of his sons and explores the complex bedrock of marriage. Chiasson sees a perilous world both navigated and enriched by the passionate young and by the parents--and poets--who care for them.

In his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction, America's most original and controversial literary critic and legendary Yale professor writes trenchantly about fifty-two masterworks spanning the Western tradition.Perhaps no other literary critic but Harold Bloom could--or would--undertake a project of this immensity. And certainly no other critic could bring to it the extraordinary knowledge, understanding, and insight that are the hallmark of Bloom's every book. Ranging across centuries and continents, this final book of his career, gives us the inimitable critic on Don Quixote and Book of Numbers; Wuthering Heights and Absalom, Absalom; Les Miserables and Blood Meridian; Vanity Fair and Invisible Man; The Captain's Daughter and The Reef. He writes about works by Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Wolff, Le Guin, Sebald, and many more. Whether you have already read these books, or intend to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom serves as an unparalleled guide through the pages of these 52 masterpieces of the genre.

A major literary biography of America''s best-loved nineteenth-century poet, the first in more than fifty years, and a much-needed re-assessment for the twenty-first century of a writer whose stature and celebrity were unparalleled in his time, whose work helped to explain America''s new world not only to Americans but to Europe and beyond. From the author of On Paper ("Buoyant" --The New Yorker; "Essential" --Publishers Weekly), Patience and Fortitude ("A wonderful hymn" --Simon Winchester), and A Gentle Madness ("A jewel" --David McCullough).In Cross of Snow, the result of more than twelve years of research, including access to never-before-examined letters, diaries, journals, notes, Nicholas Basbanes reveals the life, the times, the work--the soul--of the man who shaped the literature of a new nation with his countless poems, sonnets, stories, essays, translations, and whose renown was so wide-reaching, his deep friendships included Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, and Oscar Wilde.    Basbanes writes of the shaping of Longfellow''s character, his huge body of work that included translations of numerous foreign works, among them, the first rendering into a complete edition by an American of Dante''s Divine Comedy. We see Longfellow''s two marriages, both happy and contented, each cut short by tragedy. His first to Mary Storer Potter that ended in the aftermath of a miscarriage leaving Longfellow devastated. His second marriage to the brilliant Boston socialite--Fanny Appleton, after a three-year-long pursuit by Longfellow (his "fiery crucible" he called it), and his emergence as a literary force and a man of letters.    A portrait of a bold artist, experimenter of poetic form and an innovative translator--the human being that he was, the times in which he lived, the people whose lives he touched, his monumental work and its place in his America and ours.

A new novel, funny, wise, moving, true, as only Lisa Alther can write ("she had me laughing at 4 in the morning"--Doris Lessing), set on a cruise ship, about a woman, a doctor, in charge of the ship''s clinic, recovering from the loss of her longtime female lover, a much-admired writer, and coping with the high-wire madcappery of cruise ship life as she reckons with her past and feels her way into the future.Dr. Jessie Drake, in her mid-sixties, following the sudden deaths of her parents and Kat, her partner of twenty years, has fled the Vermont life she has known for decades.In an effort to escape the oppressive constancy of grief, she accepts a job from an old flame from her residency in New York City''s Roosevelt Hospital, and agrees to assist Ben as the ship''s doctor on a British liner. Jesse boards in Hong Kong and as the Amphitrite sails throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East, cruise ship antics ensue. Jessie is lulled back into a long-ago romance with the ship''s co-doctor, and both she and her new/old beau become enmeshed with the ship''s lead (female) singer/entertainer. Among the passengers who fling socialized behavior aside on the high seas: a former Florida beauty queen (Miss Florida Power and Light) on a second honeymoon with her husband, as she causes high-velocity scandal, while juggling onboard affairs with a suicidal golf pro, and a defrocked priest hired as the liner''s ''Gentleman Host'', until she vanishes--poof!--from the ship off the coast of Portugal . . . As the ship sails through the Gulf of Aden, and into a possible hijacking by Somali pirates, Jessie retreats into her lover''s journals, written during her final months, journals filled with sketches of potential characters, observations on life and love--as well as drafts of a long new poem in-progress, "Swan Song," that seems to be about being in love with someone else, someone new. As Jessie''s grief turns to suspicion about the woman she thought she knew so well, her illumination of the poem''s meaning begins to lift the constraints of the past and make clear the way toward the future.

From the most successful Republican political operative of his generation, a searing, unflinching, and deeply personal exposé of how his party became what it is todayStuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP''s DNA, from Goldwater''s opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan''s welfare queens and states'' rights rhetoric. He gives an insider''s account of the rank hypocrisy of the party''s claims to embody "family values," and shows how the party''s vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republication Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground.

From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a revelatory study of traditional advice on healthy eating--why these established rules might be the wrong approach to weight loss for millions of people, and how low-carbohydrate, high-fat/ketogenic diets can help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight for life.Based on 20 years of investigative reporting and interviews with 100 practicing physicians who embrace this way of eating as the best prescriptions for their patients'' health, Taubes''s book puts the ketogenic diet movement in the necessary historical and scientific perspective. It makes clear the vital misconceptions in how we''ve come to think about obesity and diet (no, people do not become fat simply because they eat too much; hormones play the critical role) and uses the collected clinical experience of the medical community to provide essential practical advice. This book sets out to revolutionize how we think about eating healthy, and what foods we can--and can''t--eat to prevent and reverse both obesity and diabetes.For years, health organizations have preached the same rules for losing weight: restrict your calories, eat less, exercise more. So why doesn''t it work for so many overweight or obese Americans? Gary Taubes, whose seminal book Good Calories, Bad Calories and cover stories for The New York Times Magazine changed the way we look at nutrition and health, sets the record straight, clarifying a century of misunderstanding about the differences between diet, weight control, and health. How to Think About How to Eat gives us a revolutionary manifesto for the 21st-century diet.

"A shockingly original exploration of class, race, and systemic violence . . . This house, tainted by the human evil it contains, is reminiscent of the opening line of Toni Morrison's Beloved. And, like Morrison, Momplaisir uses the tropes of fantasy to try to assert truths that ordinary language and realistic imagery cannot communicate . . . Momplaisir's debut introduces her as an author to watch." --KirkusFor fans of Edwidge Danticat, Mehsin Hamid, Kate Atkinson, and Jesmyn Ward: a literary thriller about the complex underbelly of the immigrant American dream and the dangerous ripple effect one person's damages can have on the lives of others--told unexpectedly by a house that has held unspeakable horrorsWhen Lucien flees Haiti with his wife, Marie-Ange, and their three children to New York City's South Ozone Park, he does so hoping for reinvention, wealth, and comfort. He buys a rundown house in a community that is quickly changing from an Italian enclave of mobsters to a haven for Haitian immigrants, and begins life anew. Lucien and Marie-Ange call their home La Kay--"my mother's house"--and it becomes a place where their fellow immigrants can find peace, a good meal, and legal help. But as a severely emotionally damaged man emigrating from a country whose evils he knows to one whose evils he doesn't, Lucien soon falls into his worst habits and impulses, with La Kay as the backdrop for his lasciviousness. What he can't even begin to fathom is that the house is watching, passing judgment, and deciding to put an end to all the sins it has been made to hold. But only after it has set itself aflame will frightened whispers reveal Lucien's ultimate evil. At once an uncompromising look at the immigrant experience and an electrifying page-turner, My Mother's House is a singular, unforgettable achievement.

Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison''s inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison''s oeuvre.

A multifaceted history of affirmative action from its inception through the past five decades.From acclaimed legal historian, author of a biography of Louis Brandeis ("Remarkable"--Anthony Lewis, NYROB; "Definitive"--Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic) and Dissent in the Supreme Court ("Riveting"--Dahlia Lithwick, NYTBR), a history of affirmative action, from its beginning in 1961 with John F. Kennedy''s Executive Order 10925, creating the President''s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, and mandating federal contractors to take "affirmative action" to ensure that there be no discrimination by "race, creed, color, or national origin."     In this important and ambitious book, Urofsky writes about the affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court, cases that upheld as well as struck down particular plans, and those cases that affected both governmental and private entities.      He writes in detail about the societal impact of affirmative action--how it has divided society, separating not only those for and against, but also splitting traditional allies.      Urofsky''s book explores affirmative action in relation to education, how nearly every public university in the country has at one time or another instituted some form of affirmative action plan, some successful, others not; and looks at whether affirmative action programs have benefited minorities. Urofsky''s book looks at whether shifts over time can be discerned and if those changes can be attributed to affirmative action programs. The book explores as well the issue with regards to race and women, and if the question of economic and social advancement is different for each.      More than ever before, affirmative action remains an important and divisive issue in American society, a divide as large and perhaps less bridgeable than abortion; a public policy question still (alas) very much alive.

Love, science, and politics collide in this sharp assessment of who we are now, in a generous selection of work by the award-winning poet.The terminator--the line, perpendicular to the equator, that divides night from day--is the organizing concept for this collection, which examines a world where "pert, post-apocalyptic / entertainment trades have trod the pocked / planet raw." Kenney's division of light verse from darker poems serves to remind us that what makes us laugh is often dead serious, and what's most serious can be best understood through wordplay, an ironic eye, the cleaving and joining magically effected by metaphor. With grace and candor, Richard Kenney thumbs through our troubles like a precious but scratched collection of vinyl: "the nature of emotion's analog, while languages are digital." From "Siri, Why Do I Wear a Necktie?" to the eternal springing of love ("Magnetic swipe to the blinking lock / is me to you"), Kenney reminds us that art's the best weapon to maintain our wits in very challenging times.

From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracyIn the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

Now celebrating its centenary, this prestigious annual anthology gathers the twenty best new short stories published in the previous year. An Anchor Books Original.The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019--continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence--contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning writers are an impressive mix of celebrated names and new, emerging voices. Their stories evoke lives both near and distant, in settings ranging from Jamaica, Houston, and Hawaii to a Turkish coal mine and a drought-ridden Northwestern farm, and feature an engaging array of characters, including Laotian refugees, a Colombian kidnap victim, an eccentric Irish schoolteacher, a woman haunted by a house that cleans itself, and a strangely long-lived rabbit. The uniformly breathtaking stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.List of 2019 winners:Tessa Hadley John Keeble Moira McCavana Rachel Kondo Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Stephanie Reents Alexia Arthurs Valerie O'Riordan Patricia Engel Kenan Orhan Sarah Hall Bryan Washington Isabella Hammad Weike Wang Caoilinn Hughes Souvankham Thammavongsa Liza Ward Doua Thao Alexander MacLeod John Edgar WidemanPrize Jurors 2019: Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, Lara Vapynar