Criticism Work

From "the best essayist in this country” (The New York Times Book Review) comes an incisive book-length essay about racism in American movies that challenges the underlying assumptions in many of the films that have shaped our consciousness.

Dorothy Hare, the dutiful daughter of a rector in Suffolk, spends her days performing good works and cultivating good thoughts, pricking her arm with a pin when a bad thought arises. She does her best to reconcile her father’s fanciful view of his position in the world with such realities as...

Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.

Perhaps you want to be nicer to yourself but don’t really know how to get there. Or maybe you’re someone who assumes self-criticism is a permanent part of your personality. Rest assured you’re not alone. Millions of people struggle with the toll that excessive self-criticism takes on their minds, energy levels, jobs, and relationships. And problems with self-talk vary dramatically from one person to the next: they can appear as mild but persistent inner criticism, full-blown self-loathing, or the pain of internalized oppression or abuse. 

Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and author of The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our spiritual growth...

Read by the author, Kim Scott A practical guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Drawing on years of first-hand experience, Radical Candor shows you how to be successful while retaining your integrity and humanity. From Kim Scott...

Who was Lilith before she became a demon? Discover the explosive true story of history's most misunderstood woman - from ancient Mesopotamian storm goddess to modern feminist icon. For over 4,000 years, Lilith has haunted human imagination as the ultimate female rebel. Demonized as a child-stealing night creature, celebrated as the first woman to demand equality, and worshipped as a goddess of sexual liberation - her story reveals the hidden history of feminine power that patriarchal religions tried to erase. In this groundbreaking exploration, you'll uncover: Ancient Origins Revealed: ...

You’re going to be criticized. Sometimes it’s fair and sharp. Sometimes it’s vague and unhelpful. Sometimes it says more about someone else’s stress than your actual performance. You can’t control that. But you can control what happens next. How to Handle Criticism Without Losing Confidence gives you a practical, step-by-step operating system for turning feedback into growth, without letting it wreck your mood, your focus, or your self-belief. Instead of “toughen up” slogans, you’ll get clear, usable tools you can run under real pressure: in performance reviews, stakeholder ...

Peter Cowie's book chronicles the life and the sixty-year film and stage career of Ingmar Bergman as he wrestles of themes of love, sex, and betrayal with the figure of Death hovering overhead. Blending biographical information with critical comment, Cowie presents a man whose life and work were intimately fused.

Why do Shakespeare's plays continue to be read, studied, and performed more than four hundred years after they were written? Because the world changes—but human nature does not. The ambition that destroys Macbeth, the jealousy that consumes Othello, the love that unites and divides Romeo and Juliet, the pride that ruins King Lear, and the political intrigue that shapes Julius Caesar are not merely stories from a distant age. They are reflections of the same emotions, conflicts, desires, and struggles that continue to define human life today. Shakespeare's genius lies in his extraordinary ...

From a psychotherapist and the New York Times bestselling author of Monkey Mind, a thoughtful, deeply personal exploration of our most difficult emotions, arguing that they are not obstacles to overcome but essential messengers that can lead us toward wisdom and wholeness. What if the emotions...

Beauty today is a paradox. The cult of beauty is ubiquitous but it has lost its transcendence and become little more than an aspect of consumerism, the aesthetic dimension of capitalism. The sublime and unsettling aspects of beauty have given way to corporeal pleasures and 'likes', resulting in...

The life of Franz Schubert has been a gift to romantically inclined biographers: the beautiful, brilliant, modest boy who sprang to fully fledged genius at the age of sixteen; the quintessential ‘artist in a garret’, entirely consumed by his art and living a hand-to-mouth existence in Vienna (home of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven); the gentle, cheerful, convivial young man who prized friendship almost as highly as music itself; the unworldly poet from whom great music poured like water from a fountain; the unrecognized master who died almost penniless at the age of 31.

Pioneers of Human Behaviour: William Shakespeare A Gateway to His Life, Works, and Legacy William Shakespeare left behind almost no private record of himself — no diary, no personal letters, no manuscript pages filled with revisions. Yet from that documentary silence came one of the most enduring bodies of work ever created: plays and poems that continue to illuminate ambition, love, jealousy, grief, power, self-deception, and the roles we perform before others. This concise yet powerful volume explores Shakespeare not as a distant literary monument, but as a working dramatist, actor, ...

You notice what needs to be fixed. You see the details, anticipate the problems, and often hold yourself to standards that you would never demand from anyone else. But when self-improvement becomes self-criticism, the desire to do things well can become a constant feeling that you are not doing enough. Virgo Zodiac Shadow Workbook is a guided workbook for exploring the emotional patterns that can hide beneath perfectionism, overthinking, self-criticism, control, and the fear of making mistakes. Inside you will explore: The Shadow Defined for Virgo: the patterns, defenses, and emotional ...

Since it first opened on Broadway in September 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has constantly been onstage somewhere, including five Broadway revivals, four productions on London's West End, and thousands of schools, army bases, and countries from Argentina to Japan. Barbara Isenberg interviewed the men and women behind the original production, the film, and significant revivals.

A career-spanning selection of the legendary reporter David Carr’s writing for the New York Times, Washington City Paper, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, and more. Throughout his 25-year journalistic career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of...

Power rarely appears the way we imagine it. It does not always command or announce itself. More often, it behaves like pressure. It shapes behavior by making some paths easier and others exhausting. People adapt to these pressures long before they question them. Metaphors We Live By: Power, Systems, & Society is a collection of forty essays examining the structural forces that guide behavior inside modern systems. Inside, you will explore: • Why incentives often matter more than intentions • How systems produce outcomes without requiring villains • The hidden rules most people follow ...

Cultural criticism and pop culture history intertwine in this important book, which dissects how hip hop has sidelined Black women's identity and emotional well-being. Do you have a “ride or die chick” in your life? A “ride or die chick” is a Black woman who holds down her family and...

In Art as Information Ecology, Jason A. Hoelscher offers not only an information theory of art but an aesthetic theory of information. Applying close readings of the information theories of Claude Shannon and Gilbert Simondon to 1960s American art, Hoelscher proposes that art is information in its aesthetic or indeterminate mode—information oriented less toward answers and resolvability than toward questions, irresolvability, and sustained difference. In this way, art constitutes information that remains in formation---a difference that makes a difference that keeps on differencing.