On our Front Table this week, find explorations local, global, and beyond: from the ferment of South Side creative energy in the 60s and 70s and the storied career of a Chicago political reformer, to a global dictionary of communicative gesture, to multidisiplinary projections of humanity as a multiplanetary species. Browse the following titles and more at ...
The winner of 2017 Goncourt Prize and Co-op member Éric Vuillard browsed through our shelves and shared his thoughts on what makes literature beyond the fiction/non-fiction distinction. In this video, Éric talks about two books – Physiology of the Employee by Honoré de Balzac and The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin – to exemplify what makes great literature.
"Contrary to popular belief, literature is not about imagination but rather about how we relate to reality", says Vuillard.
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A bookstore is more than a retail space, and on this episode of Open Stacks we welcome back old friends and longtime members of the Co-op for a celebration of community committed to a sense of time and conversation spoken across the ages. Poet David Ferry goes in search of a communal voice in his landmark translation of Virgil's The Aeneid; peace activist and Indologist David Shulman walks us through the West Bank in Palestine, retracing the "ambiguous grounds for action," freedom, and despair in territories that can't seem to coexist; and Hyde Park's own Michelle Obama returns to the Co-op to kickoff her tour for Becoming.
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On our Front Table this week, new collections and anthologies reshape our understanding of literary and artistic traditions: a survey of 25 women writers fundamental to American science fiction; a trio of booklets presenting a distinctively Belgian surrealism; a comprehensive selection from Oulipo; a bibliophile's guide to literary Chicago; and an atlas of brutalism as a global architectural movement. Browse the following titles and more at ...
On our Front Table this week, explore systems of representation and their politics. Start with a global tour of the most spoken languages and the customs that they encode. Then find an inquiry into the religious origins of secular political categories, contested representations of African American history, and an attempt at representing global trade and finance in infographics that could change the way you see "the economy." Browse the following titles and more at ...
David Shulman knows intimately what it takes to live your beliefs, to return, day after day, to the struggle, despite knowing you are often more likely to lose than win. Interweaving powerful stories and deep meditations, Freedom and Despair offers vivid firsthand reports from the occupied West Bank in Palestine as seen through the eyes of an experienced Israeli peace activist who has seen the Israeli occupation close up as it impacts on the lives of all Palestinian civilians.
Alongside a handful of beautifully written and often shocking tales from the field, Shulman meditates deeply on how to understand the evils around him, what...
Our journey into other worlds continues on this episode of Open Stacks in preparation for the after and before-lives of great books, with lions, bears, and very hungry caterpillars (oh my!) that makeup and reveal the environmental wisdom of children's literature in scientist and poet Liam Heneghan's Beasts at Bedtime. Then...
On our Front Table this week, find struggles for queer desire and identity, from the debut novel of an acclaimed musician, to the memoir of an influential academic. Also explore a range of responses to new authoritarian threats, including prescriptions for protecting a free press, and a trio of interventions that bring critical theory to bear on the contemporary conjuncture. Browse the following titles and more at ...
The following interview originally appeared in A Young Person's Guide to 57th Street Books, our monthly dispatch full of books and happenings for children of all ages. Join us!
Matthew Cordell is the Caldecott award-winning author of Wolf in the Snow, Trouble Gum, Another Brother, hello! hello!, and Wish. He has illustrated the books of renowned authors...
Marcia Bjornerud is professor of geology and environmental studies at Lawrence University. She is the author of Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earthand a contributing writer for Elements, the New Yorker’s science and technology blog. Marcia Bjornerud will discuss Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World...