Bøger udgivet af Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

A hilarious picture book that follows the adventures of a well-meaning grizzly bear trying to help her forest friends.Don't look at this bear and think she is ferocious. Quite the opposite of grizzly. She is friendly!Need directions? She's your bear. What about an afternoon snack? Look no further. Being this thoughtful has always come naturally to her, and she just knows it's appreciated by all her forest friends. Keep an eye out! There's always someone in need of a helping hand-or paw.From the silly to the sincere, I Am Friendly by children's author Kristen Tracy and rising star illustrator Erin Kraan will resonate with every big-hearted reader.

Dawn breaksnew dayhearts lightsisters play.In this lyrical and spare picture book with beautiful illustrations from Fanny Liem, author Jyoti Rajan Gopal tells the story of two sisters who are excited to go on a backyard adventure. But when their make-believe meets with disaster, the sisters take some time apart. They learn to forgive each other's mistakes, and soon the sisters are combining their ideas to make the most beautiful backyard kingdom of all. Because now they know:Sister spiritsister strongsister heartsister strong.

Keepers of the Stones and Stars is a witty, young adult contemporary epic fantasy about a cheeky quintet of teens chosen by magical gems to save the world.Save the world. Get the guy. Reed is leading his best life: he's just kissed the boy of his dreams, his band is finally taking off, and he's a shoo-in to getting elected as next year's Student Council president. But he's ready to give it all up when his suspiciously aristocratic guidance counselor tells him he has been chosen to go on the adventure of a lifetime. Because Reed is the first of five Stone Bearers to be chosen by magical gems and granted their powers. All he has to do is unite all five and lead them to seal a portal that will release an onslaught of uncontrollable chaotic magical energies, and destroy the world as we know it. It's up to the Ruby, Sapphire, Topaz, Emerald, and Amethyst Bearers to save the world, fulfilling their roles in a centuries-old cycle that dates back to 17th century Mughal India and the first Keepers of the Stones and Stars.

"A new book from the acclaimed psychoanalytic writer Adam Phillips on giving up to feel more alive"--

With an introduction by Jeff VanderMeer that makes an ardent case for its relevance to today's world, this rediscovered classic of Scandinavian fiction is still shockingly relevant more than fifty years after it was first published. Sven Holm's Termush is a searing and prophetic study of humanity forced into a moral bind through its own doing. Termush caters to every need of its wealthy patrons-first among them, a coveted spot at this exclusive seaside getaway, a resort designed for the end of the world.Everyone within its walls has been promised full protection from the aftereffects of "the disaster." The staff work behind the scenes to create a calming and frictionless mood; they pipe soothing music into the halls and quickly remove the dead birds that fall out of the sky. But the specter of death remains. Recon teams come and go in protective gear. Fear of contamination spreads as the hotel cautiously welcomes survivors only to then censor news of their arrival. As the days pass, the veneer of control begins to crack, and it becomes clear that the residents of Termush can insulate themselves from neither the physical effects of the cataclysm nor the moral fallout of using their wealth to separate themselves from the fate of those trapped outside.

"If ever a book was necessary, it's this one." -Bill McKibben"Thoughtful and honest . . . Incisive . . . Klein moves her reader toward the truer grounds of solidarity in these times." -Judith ButlerWhat if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self-a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against?Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience-she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us-and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now-and an intellectual adventure story for our times.

From the acclaimed biographer Cynthia Carr, the first full portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar Candy Darling.Warhol superstar and transgender icon Candy Darling was glamour personified, but she was without a real place in the world.Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York's early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol's films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max's Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.Yet Candy lived on the edge, relying on the kindness of strangers, friends, and her quietly devoted mother, sleeping on couches and in cheap hotel rooms, keeping a part of herself hidden. She wanted to be a star, but mostly she wanted to be loved. Her last diary entry was: "I shall try to be grateful for life . . . Cannot imagine who would want me." Candy died at twenty-nine in 1974, as conversations about gender and identity were really just starting. She never knew it, but she changed the world.Packed with tales of luminaries and gossip and meticulous research, immersive and laced with Candy's words and her friends' recollections, Cynthia Carr's Candy Darling is Candy's long-overdue return to the spotlight.

The brilliant and bracing debut collection of poetry from Declan Ryan: a writer, critic, and fierce new literary voice.Declan Ryan's Crisis Actor chronicles various kinds of failures and farewells. It is peopled by faded heroes and deferential devotees, a hanged donkey and a bloated rat, solitary bachelors and disillusioned youths-these are the watchers, not the players. The poems are awash in rueful self-accusation and laconic skepticism. There are touching elegies, reportage, and bruised, wary replayings. A blistering sequence about boxers and their fates weaves through the collection. The overwhelming sense is of life going on elsewhere, the halcyon days and brightness of years long past. This is the aftermath of being one who-in Matthew Arnold's words-"has reached his utmost limits and finds . . . himself far less than he had imagined himself."But there are still flashes of camaraderie, of stars aligning: lunchtimes in sunlit garden squares, languorous afternoons in pubs cheering for hard-won triumphs. These precious, precarious moments point to how we might reclaim potential, discover human connection in times of defeat or despair, and reach toward grace and redemption.

A novel as wise as it is tender, a meditation on the miracle of friendship and the heartbreak of change, Followed by the Lark inhabits the life of Henry David Thoreau.Composed in small scenes, Followed by the Lark is a novel of meditations-on loss, on change, on the danger and healing that come from communion with the natural world.Henry David Thoreau's connection to nature was tied to his feelings of grief; before he was twenty-seven years old and went to live at Walden Pond, two of those closest to him had died-his older brother, John, and his friend Charles Wheeler. Nature provided solace for these losses, but the world was changing around him. The forests were being destroyed by the logging industry. Wildlife was increasingly slaughtered for profit and sport. The railroad clanged through his quiet hometown. And the catastrophes of the American Civil War were beginning to stir just as his own life was coming to an end. Haunting in its quiet spaces, in the way it imagines the missed connections in his relationships, Followed by the Lark is uncommon in its combination of scope and brevity, in its communion with its subject while still maintaining critical distance.Thoreau's life in the early nineteenth century seems firmly in the past, but his time bears striking similarities to ours. As she explores these intersections in Followed by the Lark, Helen Humphreys elegantly, insistently illustrates how Thoreau's concerns are still, vitally, our own.

This beautiful, slender collection-small and weighted like a coin-is Rowan Ricardo Phillips at his very best. These luminous, unsparing, dreamlike poems are as lyrical as they are virtuosic. "Not the meaning," Phillips writes, "but the meaningfulness of this mystery we call life" powers these poems as they conjure their prismatic array of characters, textures, and moods. As it reverberates through several styles (blank verse, elegy, terza rima, rhyme royal, translation, rap), Silver reimagines them with such extraordinary vision and alluring strangeness that they sound irrepressibly fresh and vibrant. From beginning to end, Silver is a collection that reflects Phillips's guiding principle-"part physics, part faith, part void"-that all is reflected in poetry and poetry is reflected in all.This is work that brings into acute focus the singular and glorious power of poetry in our complex world.

A thrilling confessional from the award-winning, beloved author of Pure Colour.Sheila Heti kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, these are her alphabetical diaries.

The essential poetry of C. K. Williams, winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.C. K. Williams (1936-2015), one of the most treasured American poets of the past century, was also one of the most surprising. From poem to poem, his voice would shift in register and style, yet a certain essence would remain: his conviction, his ethic, and his burning gaze. As William Deresiewicz wrote in The New York Times, "Williams's scorching honesty has always been his calling card. His poetry proceeds not from a verbal impulse, not from a lyrical impulse, not even from a prophetic or visionary impulse, but from a moral impulse. Everything, in his work, is held up to the most exacting ethical scrutiny, beginning with the poet himself."Invisible Mending: The Best of C. K. Williams is the essential collection of the great poet's work. Selected by his family and friends and with an introduction by the award-winning poet Alan Shapiro, this book charts Williams's path from gifted young poet to his status as one of the most consequential poets of his-or any-generation. "If American poetry today is, as I believe it is, more diverse than ever," Shapiro writes, "more open to any and all forms of life, more vitally engaged with a world external to the self and shared with others, it's because of what the poems in this volume accomplished." This collection distills the prolific poet's body of work into one indispensable volume, through which one can trace the shifts and innovations that Williams's work bore on American poetry.

From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world. Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on "gender" that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed "anti-gender ideology movements" that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization-and even "man" himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.The aim of Who's Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how "gender" has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of "gender" collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of "critical race theory" and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless-a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.

An autobiographical novel from Édouard Louis, hailed as one of the most important voices of his generation-about social class, transformation, and the perils of leaving the past behind.One question took center stage in my life, it focused all of my thoughts and occupied every moment when I was alone with myself: how could I get this revenge, by what means? I tried everything.Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination, and violence in his working-class hometown-so he sets out for school in Amiens, and, later, university in Paris. He sheds the provincial "Eddy" for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug-dealers alike. Everything he does is motivated by a single obsession: to become someone else. At once harrowing and profound, Change is not just a personal odyssey, a story of dreams and of "the beautiful violence of being torn away," but a profound portrait of a society divided by class, power, and inequality.

Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family¿the climax of a yearslong project.When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis trilogy ten years ago, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story.Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir, and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire's financial survival. Tracing the profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations, of America's most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and Ashes Amitav Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

A leading thinker's witty, wide-ranging journey to understanding what it means to be a Jew today.What does it mean to be a Jew? As intermarriage, political upheaval, and new forms of spirituality spread, venerable answers to this question have become unsettled. In Bad Jew, the legal scholar and columnist Noah Feldman draws on his Jewish studies scholarship and his religious education to offer a new account of Judaism in its contemporary varieties. How have Jews understood their relationship to God, to Israel, and to each other-and lived their lives accordingly? Writing sympathetically but incisively about diverse outlooks, Feldman clarifies what's at stake in the choice of how to be a Jew, and discusses the "theology of struggle" that lies at the heart of Jewish belief (and unbelief). He shows how the founding of Israel has transformed Jewish life over the last century-and explores the tricky consequences of that transformation for all Jews, including for those who insist that eternal Judaism should not be so intertwined with an actually existing state. And he examines the analogies between being Jewish and belonging to a large, messy family-a family that continues to struggle with God, or the idea of God, together.Ranging from ancient rabbis and Maimonides to contemporary revisers of the faith, from messianic expectations to the old teaching that there is no such thing as a "bad Jew," Feldman's book offers a novel view of the rewards and dilemmas of contemporary Jewish life.

A revelatory biography of the writer-activist who inspired today's movements for social and racial justiceIn the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of Existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city. Fanon went on to practice a novel psychiatry of "dis-alienation" in rural France and Algeria, and then join the Algerian independence struggle, where he became a spokesman, diplomat, and clandestine strategist. He died in 1961, while under the care of the CIA in a Maryland hospital. Today, Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth have become canonical texts of the Black and global radical imagination, comparable to James Baldwin's essays in their influence. And yet they are little understood. In The Rebel's Clinic, Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon's extraordinary life-and a guide to the books that underlie today's most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism.Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs

Humanity is on the precipice of a great climate migration, and Americans will not be spared. Tens of millions of people are likely to be driven from the places they call home. Poorer communities will be left behind, while growth will surge in the cities and regions most attractive to climate refugees. America will be changed utterly.Abrahm Lustgarten's Unlivable is the definitive account of what this massive population shift might look like. As he shows, the United States will be rendered unrecognizable by four unstoppable forces: wildfires in the West; frequent flooding in coastal regions; extreme heat and humidity in the South; and droughts that will make farming all but impossible across much of the nation.Reporting from the front lines of climate migration, Lustgarten explains how a pattern of shortsighted policies encouraged millions to settle in vulnerable parts of the country, and introduces us to homeowners in California, insurance customers in Florida, and ranchers in Colorado who are being forced to make the agonizing choice of when, not whether, to leave. Employing the most current climate data and predictive models, he shows how America's population will be squeezed northward into a shrinking triangle of land stretching from Tennessee to Maine to the Great Lakes. The places many of us now call home are dying, and Unlivable reveals how we'll deal with the consequences.

An inspiring picture book biography about Glenn Burke, the first Major League Baseball player to come out as gay, and the story of how he created the world's most recognizable handshake, the high five.Playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Glenn Burke could do it all-hit, throw, run, field. He was the heart of the clubhouse who energized his teammates with his enthusiasm and love for the game. It was that energy that led Glenn to invent the high five one October day back in 1977-a spontaneous gesture after a home run that has since evolved into our universal celebratory greeting.But despite creating this joyful symbol, Glenn Burke, a gay Black man, wasn't always given support and shown acceptance in return.From acclaimed author Phil Bildner, with illustrations from Daniel J. O'Brien, this moving picture book biography recognizes the challenges Burke faced while celebrating how his bravery and his now-famous handshake helped pave the way for others to live openly and free.

A standalone companion to An Improbable Season, this Regency romance ¿- perfect for fans of Bridgerton - is about following your heart, pursuing your dreams, and falling head over heels in love.Eleanor did not come to London to be proper and boring. After the death of her husband and a year of mourning, the seventeen year old wants nothing more than her independence and to have a little fun. She's hardly looking to remarry, despite pressures from her late husband's nephew, who is keen on obtaining her inheritance. Eleanor quickly devises a plan that includes a fake engagement. What's not a part of the plan? Falling for a dashing, quiet man outside of her social circle - a man who is not her betrothed. Can she survive the Season with her heart and her fortune intact?Thalia is determined to begin afresh after a disastrous first Season in London. No romantic distractions, but only her work as a poet and newfound companion to Eleanor. Determined to get her poems published, she struggles to be taken seriously as a female writer. As the spring progresses, Thalia does not expect to take interest in a man from her past (a man who is engaged to her employer, no less!), but some feelings demand to be felt even if the timing isn't quite right.Rosalyn Eves's An Unlikely Proposition is a transportive Regency drama that captures the sparkle of London, thrill of friendship, and swoon of new love.

A stunning picture book by Leslie Helakoski and illustrated by Keisha Morris about resilience, survival, and hope found in community. When the rain came down and the water rose up . . .thousands fled but many couldn't leave.When the rain came down and the water rose up . . .a community came together.When the rain came down and the water rose up . . .hope grew from heartache.With lyrical text and evocative illustrations, When the Rain Came Down spreads a powerful message of resilience through community building after the tides of a natural disaster and captures the incredible strength of shared humanity even on the darkest days.

Sure to bring a smile to the faces of even the grumpiest readers, this laugh-out-loud picture book from #1 New York Times-bestselling author Jory John and internationally acclaimed illustrator Olivier Tallec is hilarious enough to come back to again and again.Attention, reader: You're going to LOVE this book!No, really, you are. It's got everything you could ever want: comedy, drama, action, heart. Plus-are you ready? It's got homework! Ahh yeah! And a trip to the best place ever, the dentist! Ahhhh yeahhh! Additionally-brace yourself-it's got raisins! Nature's candy. AHH YEAHHH! This book is so great, you won't be able to stop reading it. I DARE you not to have fun.

For fans of Casey McQuiston and Alice Oseman, a girl falls for her best friend's crush in Cupid's Revenge, a queer YA rom-com from Wibke Brueggemann that's equal parts hilarious and swoon-worthy.It was never Tilly's intention to fall in love, but Cupid will get you when you least expect it. That's exactly what happens when Tilly's best friend, Teddy, ropes Tilly into a plan to woo his dream girl, aspiring actress Katherine Cooper-Bunting. It turns out Teddy's not the only one who finds her dreamy.But Katherine is off-limits. The only thing more important than Tilly's feelings for someone she just met is not hurting Teddy, whose heart has been broken in the past.Though, avoiding temptation is easier said than done, as Teddy convinces Tilly to help him audition for a local play as a way to get to know Katherine better-a complete horror for someone who grew up in an artsy family but doesn't have a creative bone in her body. On top of dealing with her growing feelings for the girl she shouldn't like (but who may like her back), Tillie is still grieving a loss while navigating her grandfather's recent Alzheimer's diagnosis. So yeah, that's a lot for any sixteen-year-old to handle without Cupid's vengeful arrows getting involved.

The magnum opus of one of Europe's greatest living writers."Instead of a chronicle, a person tends to manufacture legends when he relates the story of his life for others," Péter Nádas writes in his fiction masterpiece, Parallel Stories. Now, in his own memoir, the renowned author investigates what it might mean to reconstruct a life without recourse to the techniques and embellishments of traditional storytelling.Taking his firmly imbedded memories-the "illuminated details" that give this work its title-as his starting point, Nádas dissects their contents using a method inspired by Freudian dream interpretation. Sounds, scenes, smells, feelings-all are probed for details that might allow him to reconstruct what happened, and when and where. In order to weed out conscious or unconscious distortions, he deconstructs the stories of others, too-moving in concentric circles toward causes and circumstances, until their meaning and significance come to light.In a work that encompasses the tumultuous years of World War II and the Hungarian revolution, Nádas traces the hidden connections between the events of a life and assembles them into a memoir of unusual insight and exceptional power. Hailed by Deborah Eisenberg as an "extraordinary writer," Nádas has confirmed his place among Europe's greatest living authors.

The magnum opus of one of Europe's greatest living writers."Instead of a chronicle, a person tends to manufacture legends when he relates the story of his life for others," Péter Nádas writes in his fiction masterpiece, Parallel Stories. Now, in his illuminating memoir, Shimmering Details, the renowned author investigates what it means to reconstruct a life without recourse to the techniques and embellishments of traditional storytelling.Taking his firmly imbedded memories-the "shimmering details" that give this work its title-as his starting point, Nádas dissects them using a method inspired by Freudian dream interpretation. Sounds, scenes, smells, feelings-all are probed for details that might allow him to reconstruct what happened, and when and where. In order to avoid conscious or unconscious distortions, he deconstructs the stories of others, too-moving in concentric circles toward cause and effect, until their meaning and significance come to light.In Shimmering Details, Volume I, Nádas probes the history of his family from the late 19th century to his birth in 1942 and beyond. In a work that encompasses World War II and the Hungarian Revolution, Nádas traces the hidden connections between the seemingly random events of a life and assembles them into a memoir like no other.

"Stunningly realized . . . Exquisite . . . A spellbinding novel about the high price of betrayal-of others, and oneself." -Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker PrizeThe hotly anticipated new novel by David Diop, winner of the International Booker Prize.Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram.The key to this mysterious woman's identity is Adanson's unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram was sold into slavery but managed to escape from the Island of Gorée-a major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade-to a small village hidden in the forest. While on a research expedition in West Africa as a young man, Adanson hears the story of the revenant and becomes obsessed with finding her. Accompanied by his guide, he ventures deep into the Senegalese bush on a journey that reveals not only the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart.Written with sensitivity and narrative flair, David Diop's Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story like few others. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal's oral traditions, Diop has constructed a historical epic of the highest order.

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Vulture, The Millions, and Lit Hub"Comedy Book changes the way we talk about an art form that is more diverse and exciting than ever before." -Seth Meyers "A sharp, loving, well written exploration and analysis of the art form that makes us smile, helps us relate, and is perpetually mysterious." -Jenny SlateFrom a beloved comedy critic, a wisecracking, heartfelt, and overdue chronicle of comedy's boom-and its magic.Comedy is king. From multimillion-dollar TV specials to sold-out stand-up shows and TikTok stardom, comedy has never been more popular, democratized, or influential. Comedians have become organizing forces across culture-as trusted as politicians and as fawned-over as celebrities-yet comedy as an art form has gone under-considered throughout its history, even as it has ascended as a cultural force.In Comedy Book, Jesse David Fox-the country's most definitive voice in comedy criticism and someone who, in his own words, "enjoys comedy maybe more than anyone on this planet"-tackles everything you need to know about comedy. Weaving together history and analysis, Fox unravels the genre's political legacy through an ode to Jon Stewart, interrogates the divide between highbrow and lowbrow via Adam Sandler, and unpacks how marginalized comics create spaces for their communities. Along the way, Fox covers everything from comedy in the age of political correctness and Will Smith's slap to the right wing's relationship with comedy and, for Fox, comedy's ability to heal personal tragedy.With memorable cameos from Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Ali Wong, Kate Berlant, and countless others, Comedy Book is an eye-opening education in how to engage with our most omnipresent art form, a riotous history of American pop culture, and a love letter to laughter.