Jerome Robbins (1918-1998) was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz and grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, where his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents owned the Comfort Corset Company. Robbins, who was drawn to dance at a young age, resisted the idea of joini...

Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters" has been called his "most enjoyable novel" by the New York Review of Books. It's a wild satire that takes place almost entirely in front of Tintoretto's "White-Bearded Man", on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum,...

Iraqi poet Salah Al Hamdani has lived a remarkable life. The author of some forty books in French and Arabic, he began life as a child laborer, with little or no education. As a political prisoner under Saddam Hussein, he learned to read and write Ar...

"'Blue jewellery" is private property. Not to be seen. Not to be talked about. It is worn like a bracelet around the wrists, on ribs, legs, arms. Blue jewellery is another name for the marks left on women's bodies, inflicted by the men around them....

Written for young children, "Delhi Thaatha" is a biography of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a much-loved teacher and world-renowned philosopher who served as the first vice president of the Republic of India, then, beginning in 1962, president of the...

As a boy growing up in rural Italy in the 1930s, Dam?n is experiencing the first stirrings of adolescence when he accidentally sees his mother having sex with the local Fascist commandant. His pain, anger, and confusion are uncomfortably intertwined...

Thousands upon thousands of books have been written about Immanuel Kant since his death. None, let's be clear, have been quite like what we have here. In "Party Fun with Kant", Nicolas Mahler tells the story of Kant – and his fellow serious-minded fi...

The list of subjects that Giorgio Agamben has tackled in his career is dizzying – from the dangers of our current political moment to the traces of the distant past that inflect the culture around us today. With "Pulcinella", Agamben is back with yet...

Breviaries, books of standard religious readings for particular denominations, are a familiar genre with a long pedigree. But you've definitely never seen a breviary like this one. "The Sex of the Angels" is a playful, often ironic take on the brevia...

This beautifully produced book, available in a new edition, introduces readers to the major developments in the history of modern art – from Realism to the New Leipzig School. The story of modern art begins with a revolution – when the realists star...