Fiction. Art History. In Nathaniel Popkin's novel LION AND LEOPARD, the tragic demise of John Lewis Krimmel marks a flashpoint point between the young artist's European-influenced Romanticism and the Philadelphia art establishment long dominated by the formidable portraitist Charles Willson Peale. Peale's single-minded crusade to define American art through a dogma of reason and moral clarity clashes with the self-taught Krimmel's subversive notion that art must seduce the viewer—not lecture her—and it must touch the realm of the unknown. But how far will Krimmel go to spread his heresy? Spurned by Peale and his son Rembrandt, Krimmel aligns himself with the black sheep of the Peale family, Raphaelle, a master of deception. When Krimmel finishes a painting so intriguing that it is acquired by the art collector Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, Krimmel is accused by his powerful enemies of being a fraud. This sets off a maelstrom of events leading to a tragic fire, accusations of plagiarism, and a fateful confrontation with Peale that will have unthinkable consequences. Throughout these clashes between fathers and sons, peers and rivals, lovers and mentors, Popkin uses a vibrant framework of collected fictional narratives to illuminate for the reader a pivotal period when American art and culture were in their infancy.

Lion and Leopard

Literature & Fiction

Popkin, Nathaniel

Literary

The Head & The Hand Press

Philadelphia possesses an exceptionally large number of places that have almost disappeared—from workshops and factories to sporting clubs and societies, synagogues, churches, theaters, and railroad lines. In Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City, urban observers Nathaniel Popkin and Peter Woodall uncover the contemporary essence of one of America’s oldest cities. Working with accomplished architectural photographer Joseph Elliott, they explore secret places in familiar locations, such as the Metropolitan Opera House on North Broad Street, the Divine Lorraine Hotel, Reading Railroad, Disston Saw Works in Tacony, and mysterious parts of City Hall.
Much of the real Philadelphia is concealed behind facades. Philadelphia artfully reveals its urban secrets. Rather than a nostalgic elegy to loss and urban decline, Philadelphia exposes the city’s vivid layers and living ruins. The authors connect Philadelphia’s idiosyncratic history, culture, and people to develop an alternative theory of American urbanism, and place the city in American urban history. The journey here is as much visual as it is literary; Joseph Elliott’s sumptuous photographs reveal the city's elemental beauty.

Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City

Arts & Photography

Elliott, Joseph E. B.

Woodall, Peter

Photography & Video

Temple University Press

The editors and contributors to Who Will Speak for America? are passionate and justifiably angry voices providing a literary response to today’s political crisis. Inspired by and drawing from the work of writers who participated in nationwide Writers Resist events in January 2017, this volume provides a collection of poems, stories, essays, and cartoons that wrestle with the meaning of America and American identity. The contributions—from established figures including Eileen Myles, Melissa Febos, Jericho Brown, and Madeleine Thien, as well as rising new voices, such as Carmen Maria Machado, Ganzeer, and Liana Finck—confront a country beset by racial injustice, poverty, misogyny, and violence. 
Contributions reflect on the terror of the first days after the 2016 Presidential election, but range well beyond it to interrogate the past and imagine possible American futures. 
Who Will Speak for America? inspires readers by emphasizing the power of patience, organizing, resilience and community. These moving works advance the conversation the American colonists began, and that generations of activists, in their efforts to perfect our union, have elevated and amplified.
All royalties will benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Who Will Speak for America?

Feldman, Stephanie

Essays & Correspondence

During the last quarter of the 20th century, many American cities were in a state of decline. The automobile paved the way for suburban sprawl and white flight, leaving cities with crumbling infrastructures and high crime rates. A growing collective interest in saving cities, however, has begun to turn the tide. In this poetic love song to the American city, Nathaniel Popkin helps readers see the city as a dynamic being with an unmistakable life cycle. Using anecdotes about the neighborhoods and residents of one city, Philadelphia, the author examines the ways that people have inherited, adapted to, and altered the living city.

Song of the City: An Intimate History of the American Urban Landscape

History

Americas

Basic Books

Set against the backdrop of 1976 Philadelphia, The Year of the Return follows the path of two families, the Jewish Silks and African American Johnsons, as they are first united by marriage and then by grief, turmoil, and the difficult task of trying to live in an America failing to live up to its ideals. ¿Paul Silk and Charlene Johnson are journalists whose love for each other and commitment to social justice were formed in the peace movements of the 1960s. But the idealism of that era leads to the urban deterioration of the 1970s. Mayor Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia is a place of crime, white flight, and class resentment that is inhospitable to their interracial marriage, forcing them to move away. But when Charlene dies of cancer, Paul returns. ¿Unmoored and unable to let go of Charlene, he wades back into the lives of the two families, with the hope of helping Charlene's younger brother Monte, once a prodigy and now a troubled veteran of the Vietnam War. Their explosive reunion leads to the baring of personal revelations and dangerous secrets.¿The Year of the Return is a vivid story of families trying to reconnect with and support each other through trauma and loss, and a meditation on the possibility of moving on to a better future.

The Year of the Return

Genre Fiction

Open Books

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Books by Popkin, Nathaniel