Covering everything from criminology to spaghetti sauce to show how the most ordinary subjects can illuminate the most extraordinary things about ourselves and our world. The author explores the underdogs, the overlooked, the curious, the miraculous and the disastrous, and reveals how everyone and everything contains an incredible story.

Combines the author's essays with work published in the UK. This title collects fifteen essays.

A chemist by training, the author became one of the witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In these haunting reflections inspired by the elements of the periodic table, he ranges from young love to political savagery; from the inert gas argon - and 'inert' relatives like the uncle who stayed in bed for twenty-two years - to life-giving carbon.

Features letters that cover the activities of Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac in the years that gave birth to the "Beat Generation". Written mostly to Ginsberg or Kerouac, this title includes letters that provide a glimpse into Burroughs' psyche, revealing his struggle with drug addiction, and his confusion over his sexual identity.

A collection of essays that contains some of the important pieces of criticism of the twentieth century, including the classics "The Aesthetics of Silence", an account of language, thought and consciousness, and "Trip to Hanoi", written during the Vietnam War. It features writings on art, film, literature and politics.

Calling on diverse examples from Ancient Greek sculpture to contemporary paintings, this title creates a witty, paradoxical world in which the only art worth loving is that built on complete untruths.

Offers a collection of wit and wisdom that demonstrates the author's vision and his style.

Features Jonathan Swift's (1667-1745) devastating short satire on how to solve a famine.

All the books published by a certain publisher could be seen as links in a single chain. In this book, the author meditates on the art of book publishing. It looks at the publishing industry as a whole, from the essential importance of graphics, jackets and cover flaps to the consequences of universal digitization.