A liberal Vanity Fair reporter recounts her attempt to reconnect with her conservative apple-farmer brother when the latter fell ill, an attempt that brought to the surface their disparate beliefs about politics, lifestyle choices, and priorities.

"A glimpse into a beloved novelist's inner world, shaped by family, art, and literature. In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud's own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and...

"Essays that show how Smiley draws inspiration from across literary history to invigorate her own writing. Among the authors she examines are Marguerite de Navarre, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, Halldor Laxness, and Jessica Mitford"--

"Okey Ndibe's funny, charming, and penetrating memoir tells of his move from Nigeria to America, where he came to edit the influential--but forever teetering on the verge of insolvency--African Commentary magazine. It recounts stories of Ndibe's relationships with Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and other literary figures; examines the differences between Nigerian and American etiquette and politics; recalls an incident of racial profiling just 13 days...