Michiko Kakutani Book order (chronological)

An urgent examination of the great wave of change breaking over today's world - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and New York Times bestselling author of The Death of Truth 'A profoundly inspiring and prophetic perspective on the contemporary world' Ai Weiwei In the twenty-first century, a wave of political, cultural and technological change has capsized our old certainties and assumptions, creating both opportunity and danger. As people lose their faith in old institutions and elites, radical voices at the margins and the grassroots are disrupting the status quo. This is the time of the outsider - the protester, the populist, the hacker. Some of these outsiders have sown chaos, like Donald Trump, and others have provided inspirational leadership, like Volodymyr Zelensky. But all have grasped this precarious moment to make something new. Writing with a critic's incisive understanding of cultural trends, Michiko Kakutani outlines the consequences of these new asymmetries of power, and looks back to similar hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages to the aftermath of the Second World War, to find a way forward. For there is, Kakutani argues, always the promise of transformation in times of turmoil. We can surrender to the waters, give in to the gathering chaos, or we can use the wave's momentum to propel us into a more stable and sustainable future.

The author shares her enthusiasm for more than 100 books: novels and memoirs by some of today's most gifted writers; favorite classics worth reading or rereading; and nonfiction works that illuminate our social and political landscape. -- Adapted from back cover

"From "the most powerful book critic in the English-speaking world" (Vanity Fair) comes 100 personal, thought-provoking essays of the life-changing books she wouldn't want you to miss--beautifully illustrated throughout"--Provided by publisher.

Das postfaktische Zeitalter ist angebrochen. In einer scharfsinnigen, geistreichen Gegenwartsanalyse deckt Michiko Kakutani historische und kulturelle Ursprünge einer Gesellschaft auf, in der die Wahrheit an Bedeutung eingebüßt hat. Vor diesem Hintergrund entlarvt sie Trump als die logische Konsequenz seiner kulturellen Voraussetzungen. Dieses Buch schürft tiefer als die bisherigen Beschreibungen der Ära Trump. Mithilfe von Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaft ergründet die einflussreichste Literaturkritikerin der USA erhellend historische und soziale Fundamente eines gesamtgesellschaftlichen Phänomens, das die modernen Demokratien bedroht. Denn »Fake News« und alternative Fakten sind Symptome eines allgemein vorherrschenden Bedeutsamkeitsverlusts der Wahrheit. Resultierend aus dem Erbe postmoderner Theorien und dem um sich greifenden Narzissmus, den das Internet befeuert, erscheint Trump nunmehr als personengewordener Ausdruck und Symbolfigur des postfaktischen Zeitalters. Ein virtuoses Manifest, das die Macht des Wortes und der Sprache betont, die die moderne Informationskultur gestalten.

We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases. How did truth become an endangered species in contemporary America? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and politics, Kakutani identifies the trends?originating on both the right and the left?that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science, and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant

Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple-young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in the Polish neighbourhood of Baltimore, he was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they were hastily wed. But they never should have married. Pauline, impulsive and impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, and judgmental, proceeds deliberately. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. A 17-year-old daughter disappears, and some years later this fractious pair is forced to rescue her little boy, named Pagan, from drug-infested San Francisco, to take him home and raise him. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more deeply into the complex entanglements of family life in this marvelous, multifaceted novel-one of Anne Tyler's finest.

It's 1949. Two young Cuban musicians make their way up from Havana to the grand stage of New York. It is the era of the mambo, and Castillo brothers, workers by day, become by night stars of the dance halls, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth—a golden time that thirty years later will be remembered with nostalgia and deep affection. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love , Oscar Hijuelos has created a rich and enthralling novel about passion and loss and memory and desire.