Bøker utgitt av Alfred A. Knopf

Following the widely celebrated Collected Poems, this second volume in the series of James Merrill's works brings us Merrill as novelist and playwright. Just as in his poems we come upon prose pieces, dramatic dialogue, and even a short play in verse, in his novels and plays we find the rhythms of his poetry reflected and given new form.Merrill's first novel, The Seraglio, is a daring roman à clef derived in large part from his early life as the cosmopolitan son of Charles Merrill, one of America's most famous twentieth-century financiers. Written in a highly refined prose that owes something to Henry James, the book is a compelling portrait of the luxury and treachery swirling around the Southampton beach house of an irrepressible family patriarch, with his many mistresses and ex-mistresses in attendance, told from the point of view of his lively but troubled son. At the other end of the narrative spectrum we find The (Diblos) Notebook, an experimental novel in which a young American's adventures on a Greek island are deconstructed and assembled into a tentative fiction before our eyes. Merrill's plays, including the one-act comedy of manners The Bait and the Chekhovian The Immortal Husband—a reinvention of the myth of Tithonus, who was granted eternal life but not eternal youth—are also fresh turns on his characteristic themes: home and travel, reality and artifice, simplicity and complication. And, for the first time in print, here is Merrill's short play The Birthday, a fledgling effort written in 1947 and a fascinating window onto the concern with spiritual communication and the otherwordly that would later blossom into his great epic, The Changing Light at Sandover.

A mesmerizing coming-of-age and coming-out graphic novel by the genius writer-artist of the Eisner Award–winning breakout hit My Brother’s HusbandSet in contemporary suburban Japan, Our Colors is the story of Sora Itoda: a sixteen-year-old aspiring painter who experiences his world in synesthetic hues of blues and reds, governed by the emotional turbulence of being a teenager. He wants to live honestly as a young gay man in high school, but that is still not acceptable in Japanese society. His best friend and childhood confidant is Nao, a young woman whom everyone thinks is (or should be) his girlfriend; and it would be the easiest thing to play along—she knows he is gay but knows, too, how hard it is to live one’s truth in their situation. Sora’s world changes forever when he meets Mr. Amamiya, a middle-aged gentleman who is the owner and proprietor of a local coffee shop, and who is completely, unapologetically out as a gay man. A mentorship and friendship ensues, as Sora comes out to him and agrees to paint a mural in the shop, and Mr. Amamiya counsels him (platonically) about how to deal with who he is. But it won’t be easy. Mr. Amamiya paid a high price for his freedom of identity, and when a figure from his past suddenly appears, it becomes a prime example of just how complicated life can be.

From the critically acclaimed author of Temperament, a narrative account of the most defining moments in musical history—classical and jazz—all of which forever altered Western culture "A fascinating journey that begins with the origins of musical notation and travels through the centuries reaching all the way to our time.”—Semyon Bychkov, chief conductor and music director of the Czech PhilharmonicThe invention of music notation by a skittish Italian monk in the eleventh century. The introduction of multilayered hymns in the Middle Ages. The birth of opera in a Venice rebelling against the church’s pious restraints. Baroque, Romantic, and atonal music; bebop and cool jazz; Bach and Liszt; Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In telling the exciting story of Western music’s evolution, Stuart Isacoff explains how music became entangled in politics, culture, and economics, giving rise to new eruptions at every turn, from the early church’s attempts to bind its followers by teaching them to sing in unison to the global spread of American jazz through the Black platoons of the First World War. The author investigates questions like: When does noise become music? How do musical tones reflect the natural laws of the universe? Why did discord become the primary sound of modernity? Musical Revolutions is a book replete with the stories of our most renowned musical artists, including notable achievements of people of color and women, whose paths to success were the most difficult.

From golf's most acclaimed course developer-a comprehensive, firsthand account of restoring the inherent satisfactions of this centuries-old gameAn avid golfer with a demanding career in the greeting card business, Mike Keiser found a new calling on the authentic links courses of Scotland and Ireland. Seized by the beauty of the landscape and the holes running through it, he determined this was how golf was meant to be: inclusive, not private; played on foot, not riding a cart; the courses natural, neither lavish nor contrived. Vowing to transplant this experience to the States, Keiser left the card business and built a course design firm from the ground up. His first project: Bandon Dunes, a links course in Oregon that has redefined the game here and become a destination for golfers everywhere. Those same convictions have now produced other top-ranked courses by Keiser-in Wisconsin, Nova Scotia, Tasmania, and elsewhere-whose magical allure demonstrates what the world's most gifted golf course architects can accomplish by working on designs that hew to the natural landscape. Keiser's further commitments-to the caddies, greens crews, and staff at his resorts; to the communities in which they're located; and to deep environmental stewardship-enhance the singular appeal of these immensely popular courses. At once an account of inventing a new, life-changing business, a guide to historic course design, and a paean to the sport that has recently experienced a surge of growth, The Nature of the Game is essential reading for every golfer.

From acclaimed cultural and film historian James Curtis-a major biography, the first in more than two decades, of the legendary comedian and filmmaker who elevated physical comedy to the highest of arts and whose ingenious films remain as startling, innovative, modern-and irresistible-today as they were when they beguiled audiences almost a century ago."It is brilliant-I was totally absorbed, couldn't stop reading it and was very sorry when it ended."-Kevin Brownlow It was James Agee who christened Buster Keaton "The Great Stone Face." Keaton's face, Agee wrote, "ranked almost with Lincoln's as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was also irreducibly funny. Keaton was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work and . . . he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights." Mel Brooks: "A lot of my daring came from Keaton." Martin Scorsese, influenced by Keaton's pictures in the making of Raging Bull: "The only person who had the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me," Scorsese said, "was Buster Keaton." Keaton's deadpan stare in a porkpie hat was as recognizable as Charlie Chaplin's tramp and Harold Lloyd's straw boater and spectacles, and, with W. C. Fields, the four were each considered a comedy king--but Keaton was, and still is, considered to be the greatest of them all. His iconic look and acrobatic brilliance obscured the fact that behind the camera Keaton was one of our most gifted filmmakers. Through nineteen short comedies and twelve magnificent features, he distinguished himself with such seminal works as Sherlock Jr., The Navigator, Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Cameraman, and his masterpiece, The General. Now James Curtis, admired biographer of Preston Sturges ("definitive"-Variety), W. C. Fields ("by far the fullest, fairest and most touching account we have yet had. Or are likely to have"-Richard Schickel, front page of The New York Times Book Review), and Spencer Tracy ("monumental; definitive"-Kirkus Reviews), gives us the richest, most comprehensive life to date of the legendary actor, stunt artist, screenwriter, director-master.

A brilliant analysis of the foundations of racist policing in America: the day-to-day brutalities, largely hidden from public view, endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse "Storytelling that can make people understand the racial inequities of the legal system, and...restore the humanity this system has cruelly stripped from its victims.” —New York Times Book ReviewDrawing upon twenty-five years of experience rep­resenting Black youth in Washington, D.C.’s juve­nile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational, manufactured fears of these young peo­ple and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children.   Henning explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and she details the long-term consequences of rac­ism that they experience at the hands of the police and their vigilante surrogates. She makes clear that unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries, experiment with sex and drugs, and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White Amer­ica and are denied healthy adolescent development. She examines the criminalization of Black adoles­cent play and sexuality, and of Black fashion, hair, and music. She limns the effects of police presence in schools and the depth of police-induced trauma in Black adolescents.   Especially in the wake of the recent unprece­dented, worldwide outrage at racial injustice and inequality, The Rage of Innocence is an essential book for our moment.

From National Book Award Finalist Albert Marrin comes the moving story of Janusz Korczak, the heroic Polish Jewish doctor who devoted his life to children, perishing with them in the Holocaust.Janusz Korczak was more than a good doctor. He was a hero. The Dr. Spock of his day, he established orphanages run on his principle of honoring children and shared his ideas with the public in books and on the radio. He famously said that "children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today." Korczak was a man ahead of his time, whose work ultimately became the basis for the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child.Korczak was also a Polish Jew on the eve of World War II. He turned down multiple opportunities for escape, standing by the children in his orphanage as they became confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. Dressing them in their Sabbath finest, he led their march to the trains and ultimately perished with his children in Treblinka.But this book is much more than a biography. In it, renowned nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines not just Janusz Korczak's life but his ideology of children: that children are valuable in and of themselves, as individuals. He contrasts this with Adolf Hitler's life and his ideology of children: that children are nothing more than tools of the state.And throughout, Marrin draws readers into the Warsaw Ghetto. What it was like. How it was run. How Jews within and Poles without responded. Who worked to save lives and who tried to enrich themselves on other people's suffering. And how one man came to represent the conscience and the soul of humanity.Filled with black-and-white photographs, this is an unforgettable portrait of a man whose compassion in even the darkest hours reminds us what is possible.

An inspiring picture-book biography about Georgia Gilmore, the woman whose cooking helped feed and fund the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956, from an acclaimed author and a Caldecott Honor- and seven-time Coretta Scott King-winning illustrator.Georgia Gilmore was cooking when she heard the news. Mrs. Rosa Parks had been arrested--pulled off a city bus and thrown in jail because she wouldn't let a white man take her seat. To protest, the radio urged everyone to stay off city buses for one day: December 5, 1955. A boycott! Throughout the boycott--at Holt Street Baptist Church meetings led by a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr.--and throughout the struggle for justice, Georgia served up her mouth-watering fried chicken, her spicy collard greens, and her sweet potato pie, eventually selling them to raise money to help the cause. Here is the vibrant true story of a hidden figure of the civil rights movement, told in flavorful language by a picture-book master, and stunningly illustrated by a Caldecott Honor recipient and Coretta Scott King award-winning artist.

From the beloved TV chef and best-selling author—her favorite recipes for flavorful, no-fuss Italian food that use just one pot or pan (or two!). The companion cookbook to the upcoming public-television series Lidia’s Kitchen: Home Cooking.Lidia Bastianich—"doyenne of Italian cooking" (Chicago Times)—makes Italian cooking easy for everyone with this new, beautifully designed, easy-to-use cookbook. Here are more than 100 homey, simple-to-prepare recipes that require fewer steps and fewer ingredients (not to mention fewer dirty pots and pans!), without sacrificing any of their flavor. These are just a few of the delectable dishes that fill this essential book of recipes: Spinach, Bread, and Ricotta FrittataOne-Pan Chicken and Eggplant ParmigianaRoasted Squash and Carrot Salad with Chickpeas and AlmondsPenne with Cauliflower and Green Olive PestoBalsamic Chicken Stir-FrySkillet LasagnaBraised Calamari with Olives and PeppersBeer-Braised Beef Short RibsApple Cranberry Crumble Some of them are old favorites, others are Lidia''s new creations, but every one represents Italian food at its most essential—guaranteed to transport home cooks to Italy with a minimum of fuss and muss. "Tutti a tavola a mangiare!"

Now in paperback--a fresh, strikingly immediate and elegant verse translation of the classic, with an introduction and helpful guides to each section, by the rising American poet.Born in the United States into a secularized Hindu family, Amit Majmudar puzzled over the many religious traditions on offer, and found that the Bhagavad Gita had much to teach him with its "song of multiplicities." Chief among them is that "its own assertions aren't as important as the relationships between its characters . . . The Gita imagined a relationship in which the soul and God are equals"; it is, he believes, "the greatest poem of friendship . . . in any language." His verse translation captures the many tones and strategies Krishna uses with Arjuna--strict and berating, detached and philosophical, tender and personable. "Listening guides" to each section follow the main text, and expand in accessible terms on the text and what is happening between the lines. Godsong is an instant classic in the field, from a poet of skill, fine intellect, and--perhaps most important--devotion.

From the universally admired, National Book Award-winning, bestselling author of Waiting—a timely novel that follows a famous Chinese singer severed from his country, as he works to find his way in the United States   At the end of a U.S. tour with his state-supported choir, popular singer Yao Tian takes a private gig in New York to pick up some extra cash for his daughter’s tuition fund, but the consequences of his choice spiral out of control. On his return to China, Tian is informed that the sponsors of the event were supporters of Taiwan’s secession, and that he must deliver a formal self-criticism. When he is asked to forfeit his passport to his employer, Tian impulsively decides instead to return to New York to protest the government’s threat to his artistic integrity.   With the help of his old friend Yabin, Tian’s career begins to flourish in the United States. But he is soon placed on a Chinese gov­ernment blacklist and thwarted by the state at every turn, and it becomes increasingly clear that he may never return to China unless he denounces the freedoms that have made his new life possible. Tian nevertheless insists on his identity as a performer, refusing to give up his art. Moving, important, and strikingly relevant to our times, A Song Everlasting is a story of hope in the face of hardship from one of our most celebrated authors.

The award-winning poet considers the shared habitat and intertwined fates of man and animal.Brooks Haxton has been writing for years about the connections between human beings and the creatures we find fascinating. Mister Toebones, his new collection, draws its title from a nickname Haxton gives to a daddy longlegs he sees at his father's grave. In another poem, the poet and his mother, in search of a swimming hole, find a copperhead rearing to strike, about to birth its live young. Elsewhere, waist-deep in the Mississippi River, under the Atlantic Ocean, on the cracked ice of a frozen pond, even in outer space, the poet explores regions and forces that seem past endurance. Taking stock of threats against human survival, our own recklessness chief among them, these poems seek among visionaries and despots, scientific prodigies, murderers, and lovers what vitality may come from an alertness to all living things.

The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States-the most significant civil-rights breakthrough of the new millennium. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage's unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable. It is a story that begins in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequence of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. In the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution. Over 25 years, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts and the epic face-off over California's Proposition 8, and, finally, to the landmark Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. From churches to hedge funds, no corner of American life went untouched. This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict through courtrooms and war rooms, bedrooms and boardrooms, to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other. Following a cast of characters that includes those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the traditional definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, The Engagement is certain to become a seminal book on the modern culture wars.

A father and husband's meditation on love, adolescence, and the mysterious mechanisms of poetic creation, from the acclaimed poet.The poet's art is revealed in stages in this "making-of" book, where we watch as poems take shape--first as dreams or memories, then as drafts, and finally as completed works set loose on the world. In the long poem "Must We Mean What We Say," a woman reader narrates in prose the circumstances behind poems and snippets of poems she receives in letters from a stranger. Who made up whom? Chiasson, an acclaimed poetry critic, has invented a remarkable structure where the reader and a poet speak to one another, across the void of silence and mystery. He is also the father of teenaged sons, and this volume continues the autobiographical arc of his prior, celebrated volumes. One long section is about the age of thirteen and the dawning of desire, while the title poem looks at the crucial age of fifteen and the existential threat of climate change and gun violence, which alters the calculus of adolescence. Though the outlook is bleak, these poems register the glories of our moment: that there are places where boys can kiss each other and not be afraid; that small communities are rousing and taking care of each other; that teenagers have mobilized for a better world. All of these works emerge from the secretive imagination of a father as he measures his own adolescence against that of his sons and explores the complex bedrock of marriage. Chiasson sees a perilous world both navigated and enriched by the passionate young and by the parents--and poets--who care for them.

A new novel, funny, wise, moving, true, as only Lisa Alther can write ("she had me laughing at 4 in the morning"--Doris Lessing), set on a cruise ship, about a woman, a doctor, in charge of the ship''s clinic, recovering from the loss of her longtime female lover, a much-admired writer, and coping with the high-wire madcappery of cruise ship life as she reckons with her past and feels her way into the future.Dr. Jessie Drake, in her mid-sixties, following the sudden deaths of her parents and Kat, her partner of twenty years, has fled the Vermont life she has known for decades.In an effort to escape the oppressive constancy of grief, she accepts a job from an old flame from her residency in New York City''s Roosevelt Hospital, and agrees to assist Ben as the ship''s doctor on a British liner. Jesse boards in Hong Kong and as the Amphitrite sails throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East, cruise ship antics ensue. Jessie is lulled back into a long-ago romance with the ship''s co-doctor, and both she and her new/old beau become enmeshed with the ship''s lead (female) singer/entertainer. Among the passengers who fling socialized behavior aside on the high seas: a former Florida beauty queen (Miss Florida Power and Light) on a second honeymoon with her husband, as she causes high-velocity scandal, while juggling onboard affairs with a suicidal golf pro, and a defrocked priest hired as the liner''s ''Gentleman Host'', until she vanishes--poof!--from the ship off the coast of Portugal . . . As the ship sails through the Gulf of Aden, and into a possible hijacking by Somali pirates, Jessie retreats into her lover''s journals, written during her final months, journals filled with sketches of potential characters, observations on life and love--as well as drafts of a long new poem in-progress, "Swan Song," that seems to be about being in love with someone else, someone new. As Jessie''s grief turns to suspicion about the woman she thought she knew so well, her illumination of the poem''s meaning begins to lift the constraints of the past and make clear the way toward the future.

From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a revelatory study of traditional advice on healthy eating--why these established rules might be the wrong approach to weight loss for millions of people, and how low-carbohydrate, high-fat/ketogenic diets can help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight for life.Based on 20 years of investigative reporting and interviews with 100 practicing physicians who embrace this way of eating as the best prescriptions for their patients'' health, Taubes''s book puts the ketogenic diet movement in the necessary historical and scientific perspective. It makes clear the vital misconceptions in how we''ve come to think about obesity and diet (no, people do not become fat simply because they eat too much; hormones play the critical role) and uses the collected clinical experience of the medical community to provide essential practical advice. This book sets out to revolutionize how we think about eating healthy, and what foods we can--and can''t--eat to prevent and reverse both obesity and diabetes.For years, health organizations have preached the same rules for losing weight: restrict your calories, eat less, exercise more. So why doesn''t it work for so many overweight or obese Americans? Gary Taubes, whose seminal book Good Calories, Bad Calories and cover stories for The New York Times Magazine changed the way we look at nutrition and health, sets the record straight, clarifying a century of misunderstanding about the differences between diet, weight control, and health. How to Think About How to Eat gives us a revolutionary manifesto for the 21st-century diet.

Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison''s inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison''s oeuvre.