With their powerful blend of political and aesthetic concerns, Edward W. Said's writings have transformed the field of literary studies. This long-awaited collection of literary and cultural essays offers evidence of how much the fully engaged critical mind can contribute to the reservoir of value, thought, and action essential to our lives and culture.

This long-awaited collection of literary and cultural essays, the first since Harvard University Press published "The World, the Text, and the Critic" in 1983, reconfirms that Edward Said is the most impressive, consequential, and elegant critic of our time. Taken together, these essays-- from the famous to those that will surprise even Said's most assiduous followers--afford rare insight into the formation of a critic and the development of an intellectual vocation.

Recipient of the 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Award A collection of essays by novelist J.F. Riordan, Reflections on a Life in Exile is easy to pick up, and hard to put down. By turns deeply spiritual and gently comic, these brief meditations range from the inconveniences of modern life to the shifting nature of grief. Whether it's an unexpected revelation from a trip to the hardware store, a casual encounter with a tow-truck driver, the changing seasons, or a conversation with a store clerk grieving for a dog, J. F. Riordan captures and magnifies the passing beauty of the ordinary and the extraordinary that lingers near the surface of daily life.

The renowned literary and cultural critic Edward Said was one of our era’s most provocative and important thinkers. This comprehensive collection of his work, expanded from the earlier Edward Said Reader, now draws from across his entire four-decade career, including his posthumously published books, making it a definitive one-volume source. The Selected Works includes key sections from all of Said’s books, including his groundbreaking Orientalism; his memoir, Out of Place; and his last book, On Late Style. Whether writing of Zionism or Palestinian self-determination, Jane Austen or Yeats, or of music or the media, Said’s uncompromising intelligence casts urgent light on every subject he undertakes. The Selected Works is a joy for the general reader and an indispensable resource for scholars in the many fields that his work has influenced and transformed.

Said demonstrates that critical discourse has been strengthened by the writings of Derrida and Foucault and by influences like Marxism, structuralism, linguistics, and psychoanalysis. But, he argues, these forces have compelled literature to meet the requirements of a theory or system, ignoring complex affiliations binding the texts to the world.

This reissued classic traces the ramifications and diverse understandings of the concept of "beginning" in history and offers valuable insights into the role of the intellectual and the goal of criticism.

In this deft collection of essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson offers poignant and lively interpretations of life that illuminate the ebb and flow of its sorrows and delights, and reveals his search for connections between everyday drudgery and a greater sense of purpose. He writes of the longing of the human soul by unifying thoughts of his deep affection for his daughter and the meaning of Disneyland; transcendental meanings in life and the tedium of long waits in airports, coming to self-knowledge and the cruel rituals of fraternity pledge week. A beautiful meditation on what it means to be human -- an enlightening and soulful work reaching to the core of suffering and joy.