About
James Geary is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The World in A Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism (second edition from the University of Chicago Press), Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It (W.W. Norton), I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World (HarperCollins), and Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (Bloomsbury). Geary is an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, the former deputy curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and the former editor of the European edition of Time magazine. He has given talks and conducted writing workshops at, among other venues, TED, Live from the New York Public Library, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the Sun Valley Writer’s Conference, the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Hay-on-Wye Festival, the Chautauqua Institution and the Seoul Digital Forum.
Featured Work
The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism - Second Edition
Starting in ancient China and ending with contemporary meme-makers and street artists, The World in A Phrase tells the story of the aphorism through brief biographies of some of its greatest practitioners, from the Buddha, Nietzsche, and George Eliot to James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and David Byrne. The World in A Phrase is for lovers of words and seekers of wisdom. This new edition of the New York Times bestseller features 26 additional aphorists and explores the aphorism in the age of social media, showing why these short sentences are the ultimate deep dives in an era when TL;DR has become a cultural catchphrase.
Other Works
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Wit's End: What Wit is, How it Works, and Why We Need It
2018
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Corrupted into Song: The Complete Poems of Alvin Feinman (editor)
2016
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I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World
2011
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Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists
2007
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The Body Electric: An Anatomy Of The New Bionic Senses
2002
