This American writer is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he contributes non-fiction, fiction, memoir, and criticism. His writing is characterized by keen observation and a distinctive style that delves into the complexities of modern life. He exhibits a deep interest in culture and the arts, with his works often reflecting his personal experiences and reflections on the world around him.
Collects together 65 of the best of Mark Twain's short stories. It opens with The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, a famous early story set on the Western frontier, and spans nearly 50 years during which Twain wrote a variety of short stories.
The New York Times-bestselling author offers a stirring defence of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time
Winter takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists and thinkers who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. We learn how literature heralds the arrival of the middle class; how snow science leads to existential questions of God and our place in the world; how the race to the poles marks the human drive to imprint meaning on a blank space. Offering a kaleidoscopic take on the season, Winter is a homage to an idea of a season and a journey through the modern imagination.
In a series of essays, the author reflects on his family's transition from Paris to New York in fall 2000, capturing the essence of their new urban life. He profiles a diverse cast of characters, including teachers, therapists, and friends, who shape their experiences. The narrative delves into the aftermath of 9/11, the complexities of real estate, and broader philosophical themes about the meaning of life, offering a poignant exploration of community and change in a post-traumatic city.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The finest book on France in recent years.”—Alain de Botton, The New York Times Book Review In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of Paris. In the grand tradition of Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, and Liebling, Gopnik set out to enjoy the storied existence of an American in Paris—walks down the paths of the Tuileries, philosophical discussions in cafés, and afternoon jaunts to the Musée d’Orsay. But as readers of Gopnik’s beloved and award-winning “Paris Journal” in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with la vie quotidienne—the daily, slightly less fabled life. As Gopnik discovers in this tender account, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar—both promise new routines, new languages, and a new set of rules by which each day is to be lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik manages to weave the magical with the mundane in this wholly delightful book that Entertainment Weekly deemed “magisterial.”
In this bicentennial twin portrait of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, Gopnik shows how these two giants altered the way people think about death and time--about the very nature of earthly existence.
Rose lives in New York, the city of bright lights and excitement—where extraordinary things happen every day. But Rose wasn’t born in New York; she was adopted and arrived there at age two; and though Rose loves her home and her adopted family, sometimes she can’t help but feel different, like she’s meant to be somewhere else. Then one day in Central Park, Rose sees something truly extraordinary: a crystal staircase rising out of the lake, and two small figures climbing the shimmering steps before vanishing like a mirage. Only it isn’t a mirage. Rose is being watched—by representatives of U Nork, a hidden city far more spectacular than its sister city, New York. In U Nork, dirigibles and zeppelins skirt dazzling skyscrapers that would dwarf the Chrysler Building. Impeccably dressed U Norkers glide along the sidewalks on roller skates. Rose can hardly take it all in. And then she learns the most astonishing thing about U Nork: its citizens are in danger, and only Rose can help them. In this masterful new fantasy, best-selling author Adam Gopnik joins with legendary illustrator Bruce McCall to explore powerful themes of identity and the meaning of home.
Bestselling author and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik embarks on a wildly creative inquiry into perhaps the oldest question: how do we learn a new skill?
On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression
An impassioned defense of the freedom of speech, from Stéphane Charbonnier, a journalist murdered for his convictions On January 7, 2015, two gunmen stormed the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They took the lives of twelve men and women, but they called for one man by name: "Charb." Known by his pen name, Stéphane Charbonnier was editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo, an outspoken critic of religious fundamentalism, and a renowned political cartoonist in his own right. In the past, he had received death threats and had even earned a place on Al Qaeda's "Most Wanted List." On January 7 it seemed that Charb's enemies had finally succeeded in silencing him. But in a twist of fate befitting Charb's defiant nature, it was soon revealed that he had finished a book just two days before his murder on the very issues at the heart of the attacks: blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the necessary courage of satirists. Here, published for the first time in English, is Charb's final work. A searing criticism of hypocrisy and racism, and a rousing, eloquent defense of free speech, Open Letter shows Charb's words to be as powerful and provocative as his art. This is an essential book about race, religion, the voice of ethnic minorities and majorities in a pluralistic society, and above all, the right to free expression and the surprising challenges being leveled at it in our fraught and dangerous time.
"One of the most original stylists in American literature--and one of the funniest--Sidney Joseph Perelman wrote gags for the Marx Brothers, won an Oscar for screenwriting, and wrote or collaborated on five Broadway plays. But nowhere is his zany and pyrotechnic humor more hilariously on display than in the one-of-a-kind sketches and satires (Perelman called them feuilletons) he wrote for The New Yorker and other magazines. Their "great subject is singular and simply defined," writes editor Adam Gopnik in his introduction to this volume: "American vulgarity, flowing up and down like waves of electricity through a cat in a cartoon, exposing its innards even as it shocks our sensibilities. Gopnik presents here the best of them--parodies, social satires, autobiographical pieces, and a selection from the celebrated "Cloudland Revisited" series, in which Perelman reminisces about books and movies encountered in youth and describes the rude shock of revisiting them as an adult. In the early, Joycean piece called "Scenario," Perelman offers a surrealistic take on a Hollywood pitch meeting--a collage of on- and off-screen clichés, show biz argot, and popular slang that rolls on in one continuous paragraph. In "Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer," he sends up the hardboiled detective fiction of Raymond Chandler: "I kicked open the bottom drawer of her desk, let two inches of rye trickle down my craw, kissed Birdie square on her lush, red mouth, and set fire to a cigarette." "No Starch in My Dhoti, S'il Vous Plaît" imagines an exchange of letters between Jawaharlal Nehru's increasingly irate father and a snooty Parisian launderer over a pair of damaged drawers. Also included in this volume is Perelman's most sustained piece of writing, his two-act comedy, The Beauty Part, which opened on December 26, 1962, at New York's Music Box Theatre and closed shortly afterward, the casualty of an unfortunately timed newspaper strike. The idea for this outrageous spoof about money, art, and the ubiquitous desire for self-expression, Perelman was fond of saying, came to him one day when he was riding the elevator of Manhattan's Sutton Hotel: the operator stopped the car between floors and announced, "I'm having trouble with my second act." Rounding out the volume are profiles of the Marx Brothers, Dorothy Parker, and his brother-in-law Nathanael West from the unfinished autobiography, "The Hindsight Saga," and a selection of letters written to correspondents such as Edmund Wilson, Groucho Marx, and Paul Theroux." Provided by publisher