W. W. Norton & Company

09/12/2025

09/11/2025

Check out an excerpt from New York Times bestseller BREAKNECK.

China has been a nation of engineers, from imperial to communist rule. America’s lawyerly society could learn something from that — but civil and social engineering come at a human cost.

09/11/2025

In the early 1960s, a peaceful world was an imaginable goal. The still-young United Nations was widely respected and regarded as humankind’s best hope for resolving global conflicts. African and Asian nations, having recently won their freedom from colonial domination, sought dignity and influence on the world stage. At the helm of their international efforts was U Thant, a practicing Buddhist from a remote town in Burma who, as the UN’s first non-Western secretary-general, became the Cold War era’s preeminent ambassador of peace.

From the moment of his predecessor’s mysterious death in 1961, Thant faced a deluge of violent conflicts in Congo, Yemen, Cyprus, and Nigeria, as well as one between India and Pakistan, that threatened larger conflagrations.

Crucially, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he played an indispensable role—virtually hidden until now—in defusing tensions and helping both superpowers find a way back from nuclear confrontation. For years Thant also challenged Washington over its war in Vietnam, identifying paths to peace that could have saved the lives of millions.

Drawing on newly declassified documents, Thant’s grandson, historian Thant Myint-U, gives a riveting account of how his grandfather’s gentle yet willful disposition shaped his determination to avoid a third world war, give voice to the newly decolonized world, create a fairer international economy, and safeguard the environment. Rather than a vestige of an idealistic past, U Thant’s fight for peace is central to a fresh understanding of our world today.

Available now.
https://wwnorton.com/books/peacemaker

Jacket Design by Jae Song

09/10/2025

In the spring of 2018, Tom Piazza climbed into a 1977 Coupe de Ville with the great singer-songwriter John Prine to write an article for the Oxford American. Their Florida road trip ignited a deep friendship, full of tall tales over epic meals, long nights playing guitar and trading songs, and visits back and forth between their homes in Nashville and New Orleans. Along the way, Prine invited Piazza to work with him on a memoir, with John telling sprawling, often hilarious stories of his youth and family in Chicago and Kentucky, his breakthrough into the national spotlight, his riotous early years in the Nashville country scene, and much more. When Prine died suddenly of COVID in April 2020, that unfinished memoir evolved into an intimate and very personal narrative of the artist’s final years. In it, Piazza offers fans an unforgettable portrait of the beloved musician in his late glory—as a boyish cut-up, an epic raconteur, a great American poet, and, most important, a beloved friend.

Available now.
https://wwnorton.com/books/living-in-the-present-with-john-prine

Jacket Design by Sarahmay Wilkinson

09/09/2025

In HERE COMES THE SUN, "[Bill McKibben] wants to convince Americans that renewable energy is not a pricey, boutique alternative, but the accessible, abundant, cost-effective future of electrified life."

Read the New York Times feature on Bill McKibben.

Activists are hoping to recreate the magic of 1970’s Earth Day — at a moment when the movement’s future is cloudier than ever.

09/09/2025

"Arguably the biggest story happening in the world right now and also the most hopeful." ―Chris Hayes

Join Bill McKibben on tour for his new book HERE COMES THE SUN.
Details / tickets: https://billmckibben.com/events/

09/09/2025

In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with a daring desire to be known—and an uncanny ear for Latin poetry. A torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, like Christopher Marlowe, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism.

What Marlowe seizes in his rare opportunity for a classical education, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture. His astonishing literary success will, in turn, nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.

DARK RENAISSANCE illuminates both Marlowe’s times and the origins and significance of his work—from his erotic translations of Ovid to his portrayal of unfettered ambition in a triumphant Tamburlaine to Doctor Faustus, his unforgettable masterpiece about making a pact with the devil in exchange for knowledge. Introducing us to Marlowe’s transgressive genius in the form of a thrilling page-turner, Stephen Greenblatt brings a penetrating understanding of the literary work to reveal the inner world of the author, bringing to life a homos*xual atheist who was tormented by his own compromises, who refused to toe the party line, and who was murdered just when he had found love. Meanwhile, he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world including Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

Available now.
https://wwnorton.com/books/dark-renaissance

Jacket Design by Gregg Kulick

09/05/2025

The Battle of Antietam, which took place on September 17, 1862, remains the single bloodiest day in America’s history: more than 3,600 men died in twelve hours of savage fighting, and more than 17,000 were wounded. As a turning point in the Civil War, the narrow Union victory is well-known as the key catalyst for Lincoln to issue his Emancipation Proclamation.

Yet Antietam was not only a battle that dramatically changed the fortunes and meaning of the war; it also changed America in ways we feel today. No army in history wrote so many letters or kept as many diaries as the soldiers who fought in the Civil War, and Stephen Budiansky draws on this rich record to re-create the experiences of those whose lives were forever changed, whether on the battlefield or in trying to make sense of its horrors in the years and decades to follow. Antietam would usher in a new beginning in politics, military strategy, gender roles, battlefield medicine, war photography, and the values and worldview of the postwar generation.

A masterful and fine-grained account of the battle, built around the intimate experiences of nine people whose lives intersected there, A DAY IN SEPTEMBER is a story of war but also, at its heart, a human history, one that encompasses Antietam’s enduring legacy.

Available in paperback.
https://wwnorton.com/books/a-day-in-september

Jacket Design by Jason Heuer

09/04/2025

Every discussion of s*xual ethics revolves around consent, but is this notion enough to help us understand good s*x? How does the dominance of consent help or prevent us from negotiating the complexities of intimacy and pleasure?

Georgetown professor Quill R Kukla argues that the idea that consent is the gatekeeper between the realms of good and bad s*x does not give us the tools we need to navigate pleasure and intimacy. They claim that traditional discussions of consent make no room for the reality that we can have good s*x even though we may get drunk or high, or become forgetful with age, or be limited by social pressures and power relationships.

Combining rigorous research and universal lessons that apply both in and out of the bedroom, Kukla approaches the concepts of s*xual agency, s*xual pleasure, and consent with unapologetic verve. Challenging readers to think beyond reductive concepts of consent, gender, and freedom, S*X BEYOND “YES” reframes the communication and social support we need to establish s*xual relationships founded on genuine respect, open discourse, and unhindered joy.

Available now.
https://wwnorton.com/books/s*x-beyond-yes

Jacket Design by Ben Wiseman

09/03/2025

Congratulations to Dan Wang—BREAKNECK is a New York Times bestseller!

BREAKNECK is a riveting, firsthand investigation of China’s seismic progress, its human costs, and what it means for America.

09/03/2025

Eric Foner has done more to shape the public and professional understanding of American history than any other scholar. The preeminent historian of the Civil War era, Foner’s keynote has been American freedom and the recurring battles over its meanings and boundaries. His award-winning works show that freedom has been a birthright for some and a struggle for others, that rights gained can also be lost, and that they must always be tended with knowledge and vigilance. The present political moment makes the importance of these themes abundantly clear.

This collection of Foner’s recent reviews and commentaries demonstrates the range of his interests and expertise, running from slavery and antislavery, through the disunion and remaking of the United States in the nineteenth century, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, and into our current politics. Each piece shows a master at work, melding historical knowledge and balanced judgment with crystalline prose. Foner takes up towering figures from Washington to Lincoln, Douglass, and Rosa Parks, pivotal events such as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the fragility of constitutional guarantees to civil liberties, due process, and birthright citizenship, whether in times of war or peace. He also explores recent controversies over how to commemorate, and how to teach, our history.

Available now.
https://wwnorton.com/books/our-fragile-freedoms

Jacket Design by Nathaniel Roy

09/03/2025

Congratulations to our IACP: The International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award finalists!