"On top of being a galaxy-brain-level thinker, Andrea Long Chu has the grace to be a generous hostess. You came for wonders of discernment—and those she will show you—but all the while she’s cracking jokes, warming a fire, disclosing catty gossip, and passing you tasty treats. Within these pages is the best salon in contemporary America." —Torrey Peters, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of Detransition, Baby

"The moral clarity and seriousness of purpose throughout Andrea Long Chu’s Authority feels so correct, so inevitable in her prose, one almost forgets how rare it is. In an era of ethical infantilization, shitty cynicisms, and limpid rhetorical hygienics, Chu names exactly, irreducibly, what she sees and feels and believes. It’s thrilling, riding the vortical currents of such a singular—generational—mind. Like all truly great works of criticism, Authority makes remaining alive feel not just possible but worthwhile. It reminds us we haven’t yet felt all there is to feel." —Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

"Reading Andrea Long Chu is always an exhortation to dismantle some authority—outer, inner, or usually both. The writing is triggering, exhilarating, and illuminating. She demands we think counterintuitively, radically, and exactingly, with paradoxical precision and irreverent urgency. This collection coalesces around the dialectic of freedom and authority—and shows us that challenging this binary is vital to us as thinkers, readers and citizens." —Lexi Freiman, author of The Book of Ayn

“Andrea Long Chu is one of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today. These essays made me want to call a friend and get into an argument—about literature, about culture, about life. With style and bracing humor, she has located the exact pulse of our moment and taken its measure. A writer and critic to be reckoned with.” —Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans 

“A book of desires ferried by the dilemma its title arouses. It is not enough, as Andrea Long Chu rightly sees it, for criticism to ask questions of art—readers are owed an honest stab at them. And Chu’s reputation for edge is well-earned. The author won’t deny her advantage in this arrangement and why should she? She wants, we want, as do the impressive range of cultural objects at her disposal. At her command, these wanting blobs—art, ourselves—acquire discipline in a form we should be so lucky to call criticism.” —Lauren Michele Jackson, author of White Negroes