Ada Calhoun Books in Order

Ada Calhoun challenges the conflicting rules and judgments that make early parenthood overwhelming. Drawing on personal experience and practical observations, she encourages parents to trust their families' needs while raising considerate children and preserving lives of their own.

Ada Calhoun traces the changing life of three Manhattan blocks through their residents, artists, activists, and outsiders. Interviews and local history reveal how successive generations declared St. Marks Place finished while new communities continued to make it home.

Through seven personal essays, Ada Calhoun examines what it takes to remain married after the romance of a wedding fades. Boredom, temptation, anxiety, and ordinary disappointments become part of a frank exploration of choosing a shared life.

Drawing on interviews, research, and her own experience, Ada Calhoun investigates the pressures confronting Generation X women in middle age. Financial strain, work, family expectations, and cultural promises help explain a crisis often dismissed as individual failure.

Discovering her father's recordings for an abandoned Frank O'Hara biography, Ada Calhoun tries to finish his project. The work becomes an exploration of literary ambition, family history, and her difficult bond with the art critic Peter Schjeldahl.

A woman content with her marriage begins reconsidering its boundaries after her husband asks what their lives might be missing. Pursuing desire unsettles familiar relationships and forces her to rethink the place of love, freedom, and personal purpose.