On This Week's Front Table, examine how the arts and sciences have always danced together; then explore reflections on the absurdities and abjection of being a poet who is also an office worker. Deepen how you think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the renewed promise of art for our lives today; and consider John Lewis, a man whose heroism during the Civil Rights movement helped to bring America a new birth of freedom. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.
On This Week's Front Table, examine a new collection that unforgettably describes a spiritual and physical journey; then critique the nature of knowledge and judgment. Consider what it means to truly express oneself through art; and then explore how one of America's most powerful and misunderstood electorates may come to define the future of American politics. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.
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On This Week's Front Table, consider what it means to recover our humanity and come back to the real world; then examine the non-European origins of what we consider to be “Western” thought and endeavors to recover forgotten forms of social and political order that gesture toward new, hopeful possibilities for the future. Immerse yourself in a true story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure; and then get lost in fiction that asks us what a sudden visitor can be: a mooch, a lover, an absence, a presence—possibly a pet? Find these titles and more at ...
On This Week's Front Table, throw yourself into a sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value--art, memory, poetry, music, care--are thrown into sharp relief; then examine a brilliant exploration of freedom--what it is, how it's been misunderstood, and why it's our only chance for survival, followed by a warm-spirited elegy to an abandoned work. Ponder how mourning can help us thrive, the role of moral exemplars in shaping our sense of the good, and the place of gratitude in human life; and then consider a scorching new fiction illuminating an argument between a father and his daughter that examines the fraught...
On This Week's Front Table, ponder a debut novel brimming with heart and humor about the power of community and connection, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America; examine bracing and, at times, discomfiting essays on the claims of justice and nationhood in Palestine by Mahatma Gandhi; and allow a renowned art critic to show how violence, civil war, and political intrigue gave birth to the Impressionist movement. Learn how visual tactics have long secured our regime of racial hierarchy in spite of its false foundations--and offer a way to begin to dismantle it; and then delve into a work of poetry that asserts that the future will forever be...
On This Week's Front Table, trace the figures of the shapes by which we abide: triangles, through revelatory analysis of trigonometry in our world; the incongruent parcels of land and measures of power detailed in the accounts of historic monarchs and historic financial failures; the right angles of brick-and-mortar bookstores and the irreplaceable value of such places. Then, deconstruct those shapes altogether – through poetry that reveals the sanctity and frailty of human memory, through the courageous translation of classic Russian satire, and the tangled woven web of a collapsing wealthy family in new fiction. Find these titles and more at ...
On This Week's Front Table, watch the matchstick efforts throughout two-thousand years of human history flicker and flare with the hope of building the good life; observe the spaces in pop culture and protest for reimagination of Indigenous personhood through new poetry and the machines that illuminate or break human spirits – from electronic pop music to the local carceral state. See through time towards the endless possibilities of the world Kafka and Einstein shared in early twentieth-century Prague, and reflect on new and classic fiction about the lives of Upper West Side women. Find these titles and more at ...
On This Week's Front Table, give your ear to voices from the epicenter of cultural revolution and transformation. From essays giving way to our most courageous and tender relationships, to manifestos on the essential and prophetic voice of Black queer and trans poets during political unrest, and the landscapes of wonder and loss during displacement and immigration; then, hear from the chorus of powerful women writers this week – from a Chicago reporter who raised the alarm to Americans on Nazi misinformation and political ascent to the enduring lives of womanist poet and the guides for collective survival they bequeathed to readers. From...
On This Week's Front Table, start off your week with Aztec philosophy, finally translated to English in its entirety; dive into stories of women under appreciated in history from thousands of years ago up through recent decades; finally, whether you prefer comedy or drama, finish off your summer reading with some new fiction about the need for human connection and self-discovery. Find these titles and more at...