Back

Name: Back
Brand: HarperCollins Publishers
Price: 50.75 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

Essays on the Soul and Spine of America

By: Lauren Michele Jackson

Write A Review

Paperback | 13 October 2026

At a Glance

Format
Paperback

Dimensions(cm)
21.0 x 14.0 x 2.0

Paperback

$50.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $12.69 with

or

Available: 13th October 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

Acclaimed New Yorker contributor Lauren Michele Jackson delivers an essay collection devoted to the back—and the conflicting ideas we load upon it.

Moving across literature, film, sport, visual art, and U.S. history, Jackson probes how the back carries powerful ideas about beauty, gender, labor, race, and political solidarity. Here the back emerges as a site of vulnerability and desire, embodiment and rhetoric, dependence and resistance.

Jackson’s prose effortlessly shifts between conversational and intellectual, inviting readers into digressions that illuminate rather than distract in a set of ranging essays, alighting upon subjects such as bodybuilding, ballet, portrait photography, Gone With the Wind, horse racing, copyright law, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Back opens a broad door onto the body as both structure and metaphor, linking artistic and political representation through a mutual attention to what—and who—is made to bear weight.

Shipping

	Standard Shipping	Express Shipping
Metro postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Regional postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Rural postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95

Orders over $79.00 qualify for free shipping.

How to return your order

At Booktopia, we offer hassle-free returns in accordance with our returns policy. If you wish to return an item, please get in touch with Booktopia Customer Care.

Additional postage charges may be applicable.

Defective items

If there is a problem with any of the items received for your order then the Booktopia Customer Care team is ready to assist you.

For more info please visit our Help Centre.

More in Literary Essays

Heresies

Paperback

RRP $36.99

$28.75

22%
OFF

We Should All be Feminists

Paperback

RRP $9.99

$9.75

Create Dangerously : Penguin Modern - Albert Camus

$34.99

30%
OFF

Dancing The Dream

Hardcover

RRP $59.99

$44.75

25%
OFF

The Prince

Penguin Pocket Hardbacks

Paperback

RRP $19.99

$11.99

40%
OFF

$22.99

15%
OFF

Letters to a Young Poet : Penguin Little Black Classics - Rainer Maria Rilke

'Truly mind-expanding... Ultra-topical' Guardian

Paperback

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF

Back

Essays on the Soul and Spine of America

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

More in Literary Essays

Heresies

We Should All be Feminists

Create Dangerously

Penguin Modern

The Land of Sweet Forever

Dancing The Dream

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Discourses and Selected Writings

Penguin Classics

The Book of Alchemy

A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life

The Ring Legends of Tolkien

An Illustrated Exploration of Rings in Tolkien's World, and the Sources that Inspired his Work from Myth, Literature and History

Reacher

The Stories Behind The Stories

The Diary of a Young Girl

70th Anniversary Edition

Righting my World

Essays from the Last Half-Century

The Myth of Sisyphus

Penguin Modern Classics

Meditations

A New Translation

The Republic

Penguin Classics

The Prince

Penguin Pocket Hardbacks

Fascism and Democracy

Meditations

Design by Coralie Bickford-Smith

Letters to a Young Poet

Penguin Little Black Classics

Best Wishes

The funny new book from the bestselling, much loved and eternally hopeful author of The Land Before Avocado and Flesh Wounds

The Ruin of Magic

Longing and Belonging in Strange Times

I Feel Bad About My Neck

And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman

Ethics

Penguin Classics

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

'Truly mind-expanding... Ultra-topical' Guardian

This product is categorised by