Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, David Goodis … these are a few of the masters of noir responsible for the great lurid paperbacks of the thirties, forties, and fifties.

In the classic BARTLETT'S tradition, the book offers readers and scholars alike a vast, stunning representation of those words that have influenced and molded our language and culture.

Here are 38 searching essays on contemporary blockbusters like Spider–Man and Minority Report; recent innovative triumphs like The Tree of Life and Beasts of the Southern Wild; and the intricacies of genre mythmaking from Chinese martial ...

This is not a history of pop music, although fragments of that history find their way into its pages.

Dazzling and original, Sonata for Jukebox is a brilliant foray into how pop music has woven itself into our lives since the dawn of the recording age.

"From one of our most original essayists and critics, Sonata for Jukebox, with its dizzying array of musical references, its heartrending personal stories, and its vivid evocation of half a century of pop music's evolution, is a remarkable ...

Reviews the most innovative poetry of recent years and the more traditional forms that preceded it

Can a single note be played more or less beautifully on the piano? In these essays, five of our most accomplished artists and critics explore questions of technique and interpretation in the performing arts.

Bartlett's Poems for Occasions, an entertaining, thought-provoking companion to the bestselling Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, is the book to turn to for any circumstance-from birth to death and everything in between.