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It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century: the assassination of president John F. Kennedy

Within seven weeks of president Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched.

Now, in her selection of 250 of these astonishing letters, historian Ellen Fitzpatrick reveals a remarkable human record of that devastating moment, of Americans across generations, regions, races, political leanings, and religions, in mourning and crisis. Reflecting on their sense of loss, their fears, and their hopes, the authors of these letters wrote an elegy for the fallen president that captured the soul of the nation.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that... As a young man struggling to find his voice as a writer, George Orwell left the comfort of home to live in the impoverished working districts of Paris and London. He would document both the chaos and boredom of destitution, the eccentric cast of characters he encountered, and the near-constant pains of hunger and discomfort. Exposing the grim reality of a life marred by poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London, part memoir, part social commentary, would become George Orwell's first published work.

Acerbic, wisecracking and hilarious, this is the definitive essay collection from New York legend and satirist, Fran Lebowitz, star of Martin Scorsese's hit Netflix series, Pretend It's a City. 'The gold standard for intelligence, efficiency and humour. Now and forever' DAVID SEDARIS 'She's inexhaustible - her personality, her knowledge, her brilliance, most of all her humour' MARTIN SCORSESE 'The rare example of a legend living up to her own mythology. She really is THAT funny' HADLEY FREEMAN Lebowitz turns her trademark caustic wit to the vicissitudes of life - from children ('rarely in the position to lend one a truly interesting sum of money') to landlords ('it is the solemn duty of every landlord to maintain an adequate supply of roaches'). And her attitude to work is the perfect antidote to our exhausting culture of self-betterment ('3.40pm. I consider getting out of bed. I reject the notion as being unduly vigorous. I read and smoke a bit more'). 'Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things and small people talk about wine' 'Think before you speak. Read before you think' 'All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable' 'There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death' 'The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting'

Selected from the range of Cooper's essays and reportage in Artforum, Bookforum, Detour, Interview, LA Weekly, Spin, and the Village Voice, among other publications, Smothered in Hugs presents the best nonfiction of one of America's greatest writers. Cooper has written on grave social issues, producing touchstone pieces for a generation of readers. His obituaries for Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, and William S. Burroughs offer portraits that are both crystallizing and appropriately indefinite. His reckonings of contemporary writers are astute and unsparing. And, of course, he serves as witness to the work and play of an illustrious roster of cultural personalities--and does so with an acuity and fairness missing from most pop culture criticism.

Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion. Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this collection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe to Martha Stewart. Here are subjects Didion has long written about - the press, politics, California robber baronsac, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive and, in new light, stunningly prescient.

In their celebration of 'little matters' - the regular round of visiting, dining out, drinking tea, of reading and walking to the shops and sending to the post - Jane Austen's letters and novels have many similarities. The thirteen letters collected by Jane Austen's House Museum, in Chawton, Hampshire and reproduced in this book give us intimate glimpses into her life in Bath and Chawton and on visits to London, many of their details finding echoes in her fiction. 'Jane Austen: The Chawton Letters' traces a lively story beginning in 1801, when, aged twenty-five, Jane Austen left Steventon in Hampshire to move to Bath. Later letters relish the shops, theatres and sights of London, but are interspersed from 1809 with the quieter routines of village life in Chawton, Hampshire, which was to be her home for the remainder of her short life. We learn here of her anxieties for the reception of Pride and Prejudice, her care in planning Mansfield Park and the hilarious negotiations over the publication of Emma. These letters, each accompanied by reproductions from the original manuscripts in Jane Austen's hand, testify to Jane's deep emotional bond with her sister: the most moving letter of all is that written by Cassandra only days after Jane's death in Winchester in July 1817. Brought together in this little book, these artefacts make a delightful modern-day keepsake of correspondence from one of the world's best-loved writers.

For more than twenty years, Tony Hawks has been mistaken for Tony Hawk, the American skateboarder. Even though it is abundantly clear on his website that he is an English comedian and author, people still write to him asking the best way to do a kickflip or land a melon. One mischievous day he started writing back in a pompous tone, goading his correspondents for their spelling mistakes and poor grammar, while offering bogus or downright silly advice on how to improve their skateboarding. Featuring entries on parents' pain, disappointment, underachievers, Quorn and the Vatican, this is his A to Z guide to the world of skateboarding, as seen through the eyes of someone who knows absolutely nothing about it.

Soliloquies is a work from Augustine's early life, shortly after his conversion, in which are visible all the seeds contained in his future writings. Here we see Augustine as a philosopher, a thinker and a budding theologian.

n Versameling briewe van die broers W.E.G. en N.P. van Wyk Louw. Die briefwisseling tussen Van Wyk en W.E.G. Louw vanaf 1941 tot met Van Wyk Louw se dood in 1970 strek oor 'n periode van bykans dertig jaar. Die korrespondensie tussen die twee broers, waarby ook enkele briewe van Truida Louw aansluit, beslaan 'n totaal van 226 briewe, poskaarte en telegramme en foto's ingesluit.

From the bestselling author of The Rum Diary and king of "Gonzo" journalism Hunter S. Thompson, comes the definitive collection of the journalist's finest work from "Rolling Stone." "Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone" showcases the roller-coaster of a career at the magazine that was his literary home.
"Buy the ticket, take the ride," was a favorite slogan of Hunter S. Thompson, and it pretty much defined both his work and his life. Jann S. Wenner, the outlaw journalist's friend and editor for nearly thirty-five years, has assembled articles--and a wealth of never- before-seen correspondence and internal memos from Hunter's storied tenure at "Rolling Stone"--that begin with Thompson's infamous run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Party ticket in 1970 and end with his final piece on the Bush-Kerry showdown of 2004. In between is Thompson's remarkable coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign and plenty of attention paid to Richard Nixon; encounters with Muhammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and the Super Bowl; and a lengthy excerpt from his acknowledged masterpiece, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." The definitive volume of Hunter S. Thompson's work published in the magazine, "Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone "traces the evolution of a personal and professional relationship that helped redefine modern American journalism, presenting Thompson through a new prism as he pursued his lifelong obsession: The life and death of the American Dream.

John Main (1926-1982), an English Benedictine monk, pioneered the practice of Christian meditation. His genius was to recover a way into the contemplative experience for ordinary people within the Christian tradition. Hailed by Bede Griffiths as the "most important spiritual guide in the church today, " Main's work inspired the foundation of the World Community for Christian Meditation and a network of hundreds of meditation groups around the world.

John Main introduces the practice of Christian meditation for modern people who wish to deepen their spiritual lives.

By acclaimed Forward Prize winner, novelist, and poet, Kei Miller's linked collection of essays blends memoir and literary commentary to explore the silences that exist in our conversations about race, sex, and gender. In a deeply moving, critical and lyrical collection of interconnected essays, award-winning writer Kei Miller explores the silences in which so many important things are kept. Miller examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it -- "to risk words, to risk truth; and through the body and the histories those bodies inherit" the crimes that haunt them, and how the meanings of our bodies can shift as we move through the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood. Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, questions of aesthetics and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice from a black, male, queer perspective. An almost disarmingly personal collection, Kei dissects his experiences in Jamaica and Britain, working as an artist and intellectual, making friends and lovers, discovering the possibilities of music and dance, literary criticism, culture, and storytelling. With both the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld is a great artistic achievement: a work of innovation and beauty which challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why, "our actions, defense mechanisms, imaginations and interactions" and those of the world around us.

As heard on the HOW TO FAIL podcast with Elizabeth Day 'I was utterly floored by the emotional depth of About A Son - a book that reaches so deeply into the human experience that to read it is to be forever changed. It is an unflinching examination of grief, a painstaking deconstruction of injustice and a dispatch from the frontiers of the human heart' Elizabeth Day On the evening of Halloween in 2015, Morgan Hehir was walking with friends close to Nuneaton town centre when they were viciously attacked by a group of strangers. Morgan was stabbed, and died hours later in hospital. He was twenty years old and loved making music with his band, going to the football with his mates, having a laugh; a talented graffiti artist who dreamed of moving away and building a life for himself by the sea. From the moment he heard the news, Morgan's father Colin Hehir began to keep an extraordinary diary. It became a record not only of the immediate aftermath of his son's murder, but also a chronicle of his family's evolving grief, the trial of Morgan's killers, and his personal fight to unravel the lies, mistakes and cover-ups that led to a young man with a history of violence being free to take Morgan's life that night. Inspired by this diary, About a Son is a unique and deeply moving exploration of love and loss and a groundbreaking work of creative non-fiction. Part true crime, part memoir, it tells the story of a shocking murder, the emotional repercussions, and the failures that enabled it to take place. It shows how grief affects and changes us, and asks what justice means if the truth is not heard. It asks what can be learned, and where we go from here.

Teaching Christianity is the most original book Augustine ever wrote. It is not so much a treatise or scholarly work but an instruction manual on how to teach Christianity. He wrote this how to book for those who would be preaching and explaining Christianity. It is entirely based on the bible and helps the reader express its truths of faith with soundproof methodology. It is a book that will help readers to communicate their message in a clear and effective way. Edmund Hills new translation of Augustines treatise On Christian Doctrine is superb. His early and mature thought on how to understand scripture and how to communicate that understanding to others is set forth clearly and attractively. The translator has shown great discernment in his choice of words and in their placement. This makes for a smooth reading. Extremely valuable are the scholarly endnotes provided after each of the four books. The new title chosen by Edmund Hill, namely, Teaching Christianity indicates that Augustine is here instructing the African clergy, probably the bishops, how to preach effectively to their congregations. The treatise is not focused on doctrine. Sr. Mary T. Clark, RSCJ Manhattanville College President, Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE. In Strangers, Rebecca Tamas explores where the human and nonhuman meet, and why this delicate connection just might be the most important relationship of our times. From 'On Watermelon' to 'On Grief', Tamas's essays are exhilarating to read in their radical and original exploration of the links between the environmental, the political, the folkloric and the historical. From thinking stones, to fairgrounds, from colliding planets to transformative cockroaches, Tamas's lyrical perspective takes the reader on a journey between body, land and spirit-exploring a new ecological vision for our fractured, fragile world.

As European empires crumbled in the 20th century, the power structures that had dominated the world for centuries were up for renegotiation. Yet instead of a rebirth for democracy, what emerged was a silent coup - namely, the unstoppable rise of global corporate power. Exposing the origins of this epic power grab as well as its present-day consequences, Silent Coup is the result of two investigative journalist's reports from 30 countries around the world. It provides an explosive guide to the rise of a corporate empire that now dictates how resources are allocated, how territories are governed, and how justice is defined.

A new collection of Shaw's major political writings presents an opportunity to reflect on his influential role as a public intellectual. At the forefront of economic and political debate from the 1880s to the 1950s, George Bernard Shaw was once the most widely read socialist writer in the English language, and his lifelong crusade against inequality and exploitation is far from irrelevant today. The thorough interpenetration of Shaw's literary and political engagements is an unusual story in modern literature, and this volume offers a portrait of Shaw as a political artist in the purest possible sense: that is, as a writer of essays, articles, pamphlets, and books with explicitly and expressly political aims. The selected writings in this volume showcase Shaw's most influential and most accomplished political work, but also provide a cross-section that is representative of the whole of his long career. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Art honours the world, and criticism honours art, even - perhaps especially - when the critic sets out to destroy. The bad review is hardly ever written out of mere spite. In most cases, the motivation is disappointed idealism. Critics are people who love art and who hate to see it traduced. Hence the critic's sempiternal cry: You're doing it wrong. What the critic wants is for you to do it better. Since 2008, acclaimed novelist Kevin Power has reviewed almost three hundred and fifty books. Power declares, 'Even now, cracking open a brand-new hardback with my pencil in my hand, I feel the same pleasure, and the same hope. That's the great secret: every critic is an optimist at heart.' Art that thinks and feels at the same time - 'good art' - requires explication. The writing of criticism in response to such art is an activity that has taken place since Aristotle first sat down to figure out what made tragedy work. It is in the pursuit of this question - what makes good art 'good' - that Kevin Power found his vocation. During a ten-year stint as a regular freelance reviewer for the Sunday Business Post, Power fell in love with the writing of criticism, and with the reading of it, too, particularly by talented novelists who review books on the side. His conclusion is that criticism is absolutely an art. But it is never more so than when practiced by an actual artist. These pieces, ranging from reviews of Susan Sontag to the meaning of Greta Thunberg, apocalyptic politics, and literary theory, represent a decade's worth of thinking about books; a record of the author's attempts to honour art, and through art, the world. In The Written World, Power explains how he became a critic and what he thinks criticism is. It begins and ends with a long personal essays, 'The Lost Decade', written especially for this collection, about his mental and writing block after publishing Bad Day in Blackrock and his decade-long journey to White City. The pieces gathered by Power are connected by a theme - this is a book about writing, seen from various positions, and about growth as an artist and a critic.

First delivered as a speech to schoolgirls in Kent in 1926, this enchanting short essay by the towering Modernist writer Virginia Woolf celebrates the importance of the written word. With a measured but ardent tone, Woolf weaves together thought and quote, verse and prose into a moving tract on the power literature can have over its reader, in a way which still resounds with truth today. 'I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."'