"Badvertising" is a marketing industry insider’s crabby compendium of the pitfalls that stymie advertising campaigns. In these essays, “Agents of Stupidity” are not inept spies, but trends that caused terrible ads. Drawing on his... Read More

Feminist lawyer Priya-Alika Elias’s excellent essay collection "Besharam" explores modern womanhood in two nations. Elias grew up in India, came to the US for college and law school, and returned to India. Her strong, engaging voice... Read More

"The World in a Selfie" is a creative, philosophical study of travel. It considers hundreds of years of why and how people go places, and what it all says about our desires, our blind spots, and how we interact with what’s foreign to... Read More

Patrick Samway’s literary history portrays editor Robert Giroux’s relationship with confessional poet and writer John Berryman. Giroux, who published most of Berryman’s books in the US, studied with the poet at Columbia. They... Read More

In Faulkner’s Shadow is a lively literary memoir set in Oxford, Mississippi, the hometown of famed novelist William Faulkner. Oxford has produced more writers than most places. There’s competition, Lawrence Wells says, to see who... Read More

"The Opportunity Agenda" is a practical, persuasive blueprint for refocusing the Democratic Party to serve the concrete needs of the people. NYC real estate executive and social advocate Winston Fisher and former Kansas City mayor Sly... Read More

Tethered to their smartphones and overwhelmed by news and work, people are looking for what really matters. Eve Turow-Paul’s terrific "Hungry" probes these and other aspects of modern life, including how people eat, shop, and commune,... Read More

Chris Dubbs’s "An Unladylike Profession" jumps into the trenches with the women reporters of World War I—groundbreaking journalists who explained the war to readers in the US, and who shared stories from the war’s brutal aftermath.... Read More