Best Selling Books by Mary McCarthy

This smash bestseller about privileged Vassar classmates shocked America in the sixties and remains “juicy . . . witty . . . brilliant” (Cosmopolitan). At Vassar, they were known as “the group”—eight young women of privilege, the closest of friends, an eclectic mix of vibrant personalities. A week after graduation in 1933, they all gather for the wedding of Kay Strong, one of their own, before going their separate ways in the world. In the years that follow, they will each know accomplishment and loss in equal measure, pursuing careers and marriage, experiencing the joys and traumas of sexual awakening and motherhood, all while suffering through betrayals, infidelities, and sometimes madness. Some of them will drift apart. Some will play important roles in the personal dramas of others. But it is tragedy that will ultimately unite the group once again. A novel that stunned the world when it was first published in 1963, Mary McCarthy’s The Group found acclaim, controversy, and a place atop the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years for its frank and controversial exploration of women’s issues, social concerns, and sexuality. A blistering satire of the mores of an emergent generation of women, The Group is McCarthy’s enduring masterpiece, still as relevant, powerful, and wonderfully entertaining fifty years on. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.

The author of The Group, the groundbreaking bestseller and 1964 National Book Award finalist that shaped a generation of women, brings reminiscences of her girlhood to this intimate and illuminating memoir How I Grew is Mary McCarthy's intensely personal autobiography of her life from age thirteen to twenty-one. Orphaned at six, McCarthy was raised by her maternal grandparents in Seattle, Washington. Although her official birthdate is in 1912, it wasn't until she turned thirteen that, in McCarthy's own words, she was "born as a mind." With detail driven by an almost astonishing memory recall, McCarthy gives us a masterful account of these formative years. From her wild adolescence—including losing her virginity at fourteen—through her eventual escape to Vassar, the bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic chronicles her relationships with family, friends, lovers, and the teachers who would influence her writing career. Filled with McCarthy's penetrating insights and trenchant wit, this is an unblinkingly honest and fearless self-portrait of a young woman coming of age—and the perfect companion to McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.

The celebrated author of The Group offers a "clever, witty, polished" portrait of the 1940s NYC literary bohemia she knew so well in this debut novel ( The New York Times). Margaret Sargent is young and fearless, a deep thinker inspired by the bohemian energy that abounds in New York City in the years leading up to the Second World War. With careless abandon, she destroys her marriage and numerous love affairs as she moves through the social circles of artists and writers, playing at the fringes of political extremism. She is an enigma, often wanton and frivolous, but possessing intelligence and a razor-sharp wit, as well as a troubling core of inner darkness, self-doubt, and puzzling tendencies toward self-destruction. For Margaret, urban life in the 1930s is an ongoing adventure—ever-changing, always surprising, and deeply, profoundly unsatisfying. Mary McCarthy, author of the bestselling American classic The Group, burst boldly onto the literary scene with her provocative debut, The Company She Keeps. A brilliant, stylistically inventive novel, it offers a rich portrait of a truly fascinating protagonist in six revealing episodes. Love her, despise her, or fear for her, you will never forget Margaret Sargent. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.

A college instructor embarks on a fanatical quest to save his job—and enact righteous revenge—in this brilliantly acerbic satire of university politics during the early Cold War years Henry Mulcahy's future is in question. An instructor of literature at Jocelyn College, an institute of higher learning renowned for its progressive approach to education, he has just received word that he will not be teaching next semester. He strongly suspects that his dismissal has been engineered by his nemesis, the college president, who Henry believes resents his superior skills as an educator. Or perhaps he is being targeted by the government in this Cold War era, now that Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt is in full swing, especially since Henry's dedication to independent thinking is, he believes, renowned. Whatever the case, Henry Mulcahy wants justice—and vengeance—and he will not go quietly without a fight. But the battle might expose too much of Henry's true nature . . . Witty and biting, Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe is a deliciously pointed satire of the world of higher education and its petty despots, tiny wars, and internal politics. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.

Mary McCarthy, one of our most brilliant and beloved authors, serves up wit, insight, and her unique worldview in this diverse collection of essays In provocatively titled pieces such as "The Contagion of Ideas," "Tyranny of the Orgasm," and "No News, or,What Killed the Dog," Mary McCarthy expresses her frank, unflinching, often contrarian point of view. Nothing—and no one—is safe from her merciless writer's eye—from politics to the ever-changing social scene to the strengths and weaknesses of her native country, where she believes "passivity and not aggressiveness is the dominant trait of the American character." On the Contrary also features a cast of memorable characters. In "Naming Names," Arthur Miller's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee results in an indictment for contempt of Congress. McCarthy reviews The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt's breakthrough book, and despairs of finding a "really American place" to take a visiting existentialist—a thinly disguised Simone de Beauvoir? From Dickens to Gandhi to the Kinsey Reports, with pithy and wide-ranging articles on everything from fashion to fiction, the human condition, religion, and sex, On the Contrary raises controversial questions to which, even today, there are no easy answers. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.

This is a unique tribute to Florence, combining history, artistic description, and social observation. A memorable portrait of the Florentine spirit and of those figures who exemplify this spirit, such as Dante, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Machiavelli.

The author and her three brothers, left orphans at an early age, were raised together by guardians.

Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy.

An "endlessly fascinating novel" of an American student finding his way in 1960s Paris from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group ( San Francisco Chronicle). It is 1964, and Peter Levi, a young student and bird watcher, has come to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Shy and innocent at nineteen years old, he arrives fresh from an extended Maine holiday with his vivacious mother, and is determined to live a life free of unwanted complications and unnecessary stress. But this is an era of great change in the world, a time when war is looming in Southeast Asia and social unrest is simmering. There is much to trouble and confuse the young American as he journeys through foreign countries—and feelings—into adulthood. For Peter, the simplicity of childhood is over—and his new life is becoming increasingly complex in a world growing more unrecognizable by the day. Mary McCarthy's splendid Birds of America is a moving and surprising coming-of-age tale: the unforgettable story of a young man's awakening, and a stunning evocation of the disorienting change of the 1960s. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.

A riveting and unconventional thriller about a motley group of airplane passengers taken hostage by militant hijackers En route to Iran, a plane is captured by Middle Eastern terrorists intent on holding hostage the committee of politicians, religious leaders, and activists on a mission to investigate alleged human rights violations by the shah. But the kidnappers soon discover that there is a greater treasure onboard. Among the passengers are prominent art collectors with access to some of the world's most valuable paintings—priceless works that could fund global terrorist activities for decades. After the captured plane sets down in a remote Dutch farming collective by the sea, events go rapidly and frighteningly awry. As negotiations with government agencies stall, concerns over rare artwork threaten to trump the regard for human life, and both captors and captives will face bitter truths about their conflicting values, manners, and ideologies as the ticking clock races inexorably toward an explosive endgame. Mary McCarthy's masterful Cannibals and Missionaries is a remarkable novel of events and ideas that sheds light on the tragic foibles of human nature while exploring the terrorist psychology with supreme intelligence and insight. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.

Three brilliant novels from a #1 New York Times–bestselling author. Navigating friendship, sex, careers, and the challenges of adulthood, the characters of Mary McCarthy's novels remain instantly relatable, whether they're living in 1930s New York City or 1960s Paris. Here, three of her most outstanding works are collected in one volume. The Group: This "witty . . . brilliant" blockbuster bestseller follows eight privileged girls from their youthful friendship at Vassar through their complicated journeys into womanhood ( Cosmopolitan). The Company She Keeps: A "clever, witty, polished" novel about a young bohemian's daring political and romantic explorations among an intellectual Manhattan social circle ( The New York Times). Birds of America: In 1964, a shy young student and birdwatcher arrives in Paris to study at the Sorbonne and finds himself disoriented by the rapidly changing world around him. This "endlessly fascinating novel" ( San Francisco Chronicle) is "in the same class as Henry James's The American and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer" ( Esquire). Known for her satirical wit and blending of autobiographical detail from her own colorful life into her fiction, McCarthy was a literary icon whose books provide a rich glimpse of mid-twentieth-century America and a psychologically astute, timeless reading experience.

"Mary McCarthy may be best remembered today for her novels and memoirs, but she was also a dazzling and prolific essayist and critic, known for her witty and fearless commentary on topics ranging from American realist playwrights to women's fashion magazines, from left-wing politics to the nineteenth-century novel." "This collection, which spans her career from the 1930s to the 1970s, displays McCarthy's acute judgment and stylistic brio. It begins with a generous selection of her drama reviews, and includes essays on Nabokov, Burroughs, Salinger, Flaubert, Calvino, Sarraute, and Tolstoy. In the essays that follow, she dissects the social and political controversies that dominated midcentury American intellectual life, from the Moscow trials to the Vietnam War and the Watergate hearings."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This first volume of the definitive edition of her fiction includes four novels and eight classic stories by the witty and provocative writer who defined a generation In 1942, Mary McCarthy provoked a scandal with her electrifying debut novel, The Company She Keeps, announcing the arrival of a major new voice in American literature. A candid, thinly-veiled portrait of the late-1930s New York intellectual scene, its penetrating gaze and creative fusion of life and literature—“mutual plagiarism,” she called it—became the hallmark of McCarthy's fiction, which the Library of America now presents in full for the first time in deluxe collector's edition. The Oasis (1949), a wicked satire about a failed utopian community, and The Groves of Academe (1952), a pioneering campus novel depicting the insular and often absurd world of academia, burnished her reputation as an acerbic truth-teller, but it was with A Charmed Life (1955), a searing story of small-town infidelity, that McCarthy fully embraced the frank and avant-garde treatment of gender and sexuality that would inspire generations of readers and writers. Also included are all eight of McCarthy's short stories, four from her collection Cast a Cold Eye (1950), and four collected here for the first time. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Candid, sharp, and entertaining essays from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and a "delightfully polished writer" ( The Atlantic Monthly). Whether penning criticism, memoir, or fiction, the New York Times–bestselling author of The Group invariably wrote with "an icily honest eye and a glacial wit" ( The New York Times). Gathered here are two memorable collections: theatrical critiques and opinion pieces. Mary McCarthy's Theatre Chronicles, 1937–1962: McCarthy weighs in on Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller with candor, penetrating insight, and wit. On the Contrary: Articles of Belief, 1946–1961: McCarthy expresses her frank, unflinching, often contrarian point of view in these provocative essays addressing everything from fashion to fiction, the human condition, religion, sex, Arthur Miller's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, Charles Dickens, and Gandhi.

Spirited and insightful essays from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and a "delightfully polished writer" ( The Atlantic Monthly). Whether penning criticism, memoir, or fiction, the New York Times–bestselling author of The Group invariably wrote with "an icily honest eye and a glacial wit" ( The New York Times). Gathered here are three collections of her personal essays and literary criticism. Occasional Prose: McCarthy imbues this collection with her unique gifts of clear-eyed observation, sharp insight, and heartfelt passion as she gives us the story of La Traviata in her own words, reviews a charming and practical book on gardening, revisits Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and eulogizes friends, including Hannah Arendt. "Bracing opinions tartly expressed . . . May she continue to call us all to attention . . . showing us the world of her imagination, thought and rich experience." — The New York Times The Writing on the Wall: With engaging and thought-provoking essays on Madame Bovary, Macbeth, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, William S. Burroughs, J. D. Salinger, and Hannah Arendt, this collection of literary reactions is distinguished by McCarthy's savage intelligence, clarity of thought, and utter lack of pretension. "The brand name tells all. Potential readers do not have to be informed by me of the excellence of this volume—the acumen, intelligence, clarity, wit and lack of bitchiness." —Anthony Burgess, The New York Times Ideas and the Novel: In this lively, erudite book, McCarthy throws down the gauntlet: Why did the nineteenth century produce novels of ideas while the twentieth century is so lacking in serious fiction? Could Henry James be a big part of the problem? With verve and passion, McCarthy provides a critique of how the novel has evolved—or not—in the last century. "[McCarthy's] writing is spirited. [Her] musings serve a larger purpose, make a grander statement, or rather, indictment. She means to set the modern novel apart." — The Harvard Crimson

Seven "remarkable" stories from the bestselling author of The Group ( The New York Times). Two American tourists find themselves seriously befuddled by their unorthodox Italian guide. A hospitalized graduate student turns the sounds of pain and despair into music. A family is tragically taken apart, and then reformed, by a deadly outbreak of influenza. The short fiction in this collection, some of it autobiographical in inspiration, reflects both the adept, witty storytelling and the insightful social commentary of New York Times–bestselling author Mary McCarthy. A National Book Award finalist known for such novels as Birds in America and The Groves of Academe—as well as memoir ( Memories of a Catholic Girlhood) and travel writing ( Venice Observed)—McCarthy shows in Cast a Cold Eye why she has been called "a brilliant writer with a rare talent for corrosive satire" ( The Atlantic Monthly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.