Books published by Bellevue Literary Press

In a fusion of fact and fiction, nineteenth-century women institutionalized as hysterics reveal what history ignoredCity of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteriaand the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of powerful originality, riveting historical interest, and haunting lyrical beauty. Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and What Are You Going ThroughWhere are the hysterics, those magnificent women of former times? wrote Jacques Lacan. Long historys ghosts, marginalized and dispossessed due to their gender and class, they are reimagined by Maud Casey as complex, flesh-and-blood people with stories to tell. These linked, evocative prose portraits, accompanied by period photographs and medical documents both authentic and invented, poignantly restore the humanity to the nineteenth-century female psychiatric patients confined in Pariss Salptrire hospital and reduced to specimens for study by the celebrated neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his male colleagues.Maud Casey is the author of five books of fiction, including The Man Who Walked Away, and a work of nonfiction, The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the St. Francis College Literary Prize, she teaches at the University of Maryland.

Comedy and tragedy collide in stories of family life in Soviet Russia and the complexities of the immigrant experience.

The aesthetic adventures of a mad mushroom hunter

A masterpiece of eco-fiction from an acclaimed German author making his English-language debut

An intimate and revelatory voyage through pain and perception, pop culture and personal experience

"e;Superb."e; -Steven Pinker"e;An explanation, a defense, and, most heartening, a celebration. . . . McWhorter demonstrates the 'legitimacy' of Black English by uncovering its complexity and sophistication, as well as the still unfolding journey that has led to its creation. . . . [His] intelligent breeziness is the source of the book's considerable charm."e; -New Yorker"e;Talking Back, Talking Black is [McWhorter's] case for the acceptance of black English as a legitimate American dialect. . . . He ably and enthusiastically breaks down the mechanics."e; -New York Times Book ReviewLinguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound "e;black."e; In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect.Talking Back, Talking Black takes us on a fascinating tour of a nuanced and complex language that has moved beyond America's borders to become a dynamic force for today's youth culture around the world.John McWhorter teaches linguistics, Western civilization, music history, and American studies at Columbia University. A New York Times best-selling author and TED speaker, he is a columnist for CNN.com, a regular contributor to the Atlantic, a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC, and the host of Slate's language podcast, Lexicon Valley. His books on language include The Power of Babel; Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue; Words on the Move; Talking Back, Talking Black; and The Creole Debate.

[Kramers body of work is] precise and sumptuous . . . a song of emotion, but with a great lucidity about the humanity of simple people. Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Swiss Grand Prize for Literature citationYou need to read Pascale Kramers books because they take you on a journey. You board a small ship that enters the human body, and what you felt while reading follows you for days after youve closed the book. Elle (France)Restrained, chiseled, implacable, the novels of Pascale Kramer perfectly master the art of creating a diffuse discomfort. Poignant. Marie Claire (Switzerland)When a young woman returns to her childhood home after her estranged fathers death, she begins to piece together the final years of his life. What changed him from a prominent left-wing journalist to a bitter racist who defended the murder of a defenseless African immigrant? Kramer exposes a country gripped by intolerance and violence to unearth the source of a familys fall from grace.Set in Paris and its suburbs, and inspired by the real-life scandal of a French author and intellectual, Autopsy of a Father blends sharp observations about familial dynamics with resonant political and philosophical questions, taking a scalpel to the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment spreading just beneath the skin of modern society.Pascale Kramer, recipient of the 2017 Swiss Grand Prize for Literature, is the author of fourteen books, including three novels published in English: The Living, The Child, and Autopsy of a Father, which was named a finalist for the La Closerie des Lilas, Ouest-France, and Orange du Livre prizes. Born in Geneva, she has worked in Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris, where she directs a documentary film festival about childrens rights.

One of the most important thinkers describes the literally mind-boggling possibilities that modern brain science could present for national security. LAWRENCE J. KORB, former US Assistant Secretary of DefenseFascinating and frightening. Bulletin of the Atomic ScientistsThe first book of its kind, Mind Wars covers the ethical dilemmas and bizarre history of cutting-edge technology and neuroscience developed for military applications. As the author discusses the innovative Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the role of the intelligence community and countless university science departments in preparing the military and intelligence services for the twenty-first century, he also charts the future of national security.Fully updated and revised, this edition features new material on deep brain stimulation, neuro hormones, and enhanced interrogation. With in-depth discussions of psyops mind control experiments, drugs that erase both fear and the need to sleep, microchip brain implants and advanced prosthetics, supersoldiers and robot armies, Mind Wars may read like science fiction or the latest conspiracy thriller, but its subjects are very real and changing the course of modern warfare.Jonathan D. Moreno has been a senior staff member for three presidential advisory commissions and has served on a number of Pentagon advisory committees. He is an ethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the editor-in-chief of the Center for American Progress online magazine Science Progress.

"e;[Norman Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights."e; -NPRHuck Finn and Jim float on their raft across a continuum of shifting seasons, feasting on a limitless supply of fish and stolen provisions, propelled by the currents of the mighty Mississippi from one adventure to the next. Launched into existence by Mark Twain, they have now been transported by Norman Lock through three vital, violent, and transformative centuries of American history. As time unfurls on the river's banks, they witness decisive battles of the Civil War, the betrayal of Reconstruction's promises to the freed slaves, the crushing of Native American nations, and the electrification of a continent. While Jim enters real time when he disembarks the raft in the Jim Crow South, Huck finally comes of age when he's washed up on shore during Hurricane Katrina. An old man in 2077, Huck takes stock of his life and narrates his own story, revealing our nation's past, present, and future as Mark Twain could never have dreamed it.The first stand-alone book in The American Novels series, The Boy in His Winter is a tour-de-force work of imagination, beauty, and courage that re-envisions a great American literary classic for our time.Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.