Before there were workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says author and teacher Prose. Prose invites you on a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the very best writers and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is moved...

Karr breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, opening our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminating the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.

"A brash, enlightening, and wildly entertaining feminist look at gendered language and the way it shapes us..."--From dust jacket, front flap.

A New York Times Notable Book

The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary—and literary history.

The making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray,

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"The Elements of Style is the ultimate guide to writing in American English, written by Cornell University Professor William Strunk, Jr. This edition presents the original 1918 edition, still used by college students as a guide to succinct and clear writing. Stunk's rules on active voice, sentence structure, using commas and semi colons and more allow readers to avoid common pitfalls and keep their writing concise and impactful. These rules are accompanied...

In February 2002, a reporter in Oregon contacts New York Times Magazine writer Michael Finkel with a startling piece of news: a young, highly intelligent man named Christian Longo, on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for killing his entire family, has recently been captured in Mexico, where he'd taken on a new identity--Michael Finkel's. The next day comes another bit of news: a note from the editors, explaining that Finkel has falsified an article...

"In this lively nonfiction book for young readers, bestselling author Gail Carson Levine shares her secrets of great writing"-- Provided by publisher.

The classic poem about the lone survivor of a sea tragedy, one which he caused by murdering an albatross, and the redemption he sought afterward, told by the sailor over the backdrop of a lively wedding.

Bill Bryson, bestselling author of The Mother Tongue, now celebrates its magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood . . . and exactly why Mr. Yankee Doodle called his be feathered cap "Macaroni."

Selected by a master storyteller and beloved New York Times best-selling author, the 16 stories in this menagerie will introduce teen readers to a host of strange, wondrous beings that have never existed anyplace but in the richness of the imagination.