New Books!

The secret history of the rebellious Frenchwomen who were exiled to colonial Louisiana and found power in the Mississippi Valley.

"Bennett...transport[s] us back to the city blocks, bars, cafes and stages these artists traversed and inhabited...an instructive text for young poets, artists or creative entrepreneurs trying to find a way to carve out a space for themselves...Shines with a refreshing dynamism." --The New York Times

A collection of essays which show how early drama traditions were transformed, recycled, re-used and reformed across time to form new relationships with their audiences. Medieval afterlives brings new insight to the ways in which peoples in the sixteenth century understood, manipulated and responded to the history of their performance spaces, stage technologies, characterisation and popular dramatic tropes.

From the collaborators behind the modern business classic All the Devils are Here comes a damning indictment of American capitalism--and the leaders that left us brutally unprepared for a global pandemic In 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic made it painfully clear that the U.S. could not adequately protect its citizens. Millions of Americans suffered--and over a million died--in less than two years, while government officials blundered; prize-winning economists overlooked devastating trade-offs; and elites escaped to isolated retreats, unaffected by and even profiting from the pandemic. Why and how did America, in a catastrophically enormous failure, become the world leader in COVID deaths? In this page-turning economic, political, and financial history, veteran journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera offer fresh and provocative answers. With laser-sharp analysis and deep sourcing, they investigate both what really happened when governments ran out of PPE due to snarled supply chains and the shock to the financial system when the world's biggest economy stumbled. They zero in on the effectiveness of wildly polarized approaches, from governor Andrew Cuomo's lockdowns to governor Ron DeSantis's insistence on keeping Florida open under the guidance of scientist Jay Bhattacharya. And they trace why thousands died in hollowed-out hospital systems and nursing homes run by private equity firms to "maximize shareholder value."  In the tradition of the authors' previous landmark exposés, The Big Fail is an expansive, insightful account on what the pandemic did to the economy and how American capitalism has jumped the rails--and is essential reading to understand where we're going next.