The legendary author's essays and interviews explore how fellow writers from Milan Kundera to Edna O'Brien are influenced by time, place, and politics. In Philip Roth's intimate intellectual encounters with an international and diverse cast of writers, they explore the importance of region, politics, and history in their work and trace the imaginative path by which a writer's highly individualized art is informed by the wider conditions of life. Milan...

National book critic John Freeman pulls together his very best profiles (many of them new or completely rewritten for this volume) of the very best novelists of our time, including such international stars as Doris Lessing, Haruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie, and Mo Yan, to established American lions such as Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, John Updike, and David Foster Wallace, to the new guard of Edwidge Danticat,...

"Sixty-five of the world's leading writers open up about the books and authors that have meant the most to them. Every Sunday, readers of The New York Times Book Review turn with anticipation to see which novelist, historian, short story writer, or artist will be the subject of the popular "By the Book" feature. These wide-ranging interviews are conducted by Pamela Paul, the editor of the Book Review, and here she brings together sixty-five of the...

When four year old Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren't expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the following months, a story as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy's trip to heaven and back. This true story, retold by his father but using Colton's uniquely simple words, offers a glimpse of the world that awaits us, where as...

A collection of interviews with fourteen artists and writers of picture books who, regardless of their country of origin, have had a major impact in the United States

Culled from dozens of interviews, this portrait of the famous artist showcases Gorey's ideas about French symbolist poetry, soap operas, George Balanchine, ballet, and Victorian snuff photography, among other topics.