Essays category: 9344 books

Best known as the author of twenty-six novels, Iris Murdoch has also made significant contributions to the fields of ethics and aesthetics. Collected here for the first time in one volume are her most influential literary and philosophical essays. Tracing Murdoch's journey to a modern Platonism, this...

Closing the Book: Travels in Life, Loss, and Literature explores the intersection of literature and life in personal essays about traveling, teaching, reading, writing, living, and dying. Each essay's narrative arc is formed and informed by the act of reading literature that makes a reader feel like...

Dr. Krantz served as a full professor of anthropology at Washington State University from 1968 until 1998. Though he was a popular teacher with an almost cult-like following and highly regarded for his work on Homo Erectus, it was his pioneering exploration of the Sasquatch phenomenon which won him...

During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice and religion. These works culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Impassioned and iconoclastic, this powerfully influential work both criticizes...

Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney's first collection of prose, Preoccupations, begins with a vivid account of his early years on his father's farm in Northern Ireland and his coming of age as a student and teacher in Belfast. Subsequent essays include critical work on Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth,...

In A Hedonist in the Cellar, Jay McInerney gathers more than five years’ worth of essays and continues his exploration of what’s new, what’s enduring, and what’s surprising–giving his palate a complete workout and the reader an indispensable, idiosyncratic guide to a world of almost infinite...

Fifty years after the failed experiment of the West Indies Federation, what does liberation mean for this generation of Caribbean people in America? Trinidadian-American author Hassan Ghanny tackles this task in the essay collection SCORCHED RICE from a postcolonial, queer, and Antillean/pan-Caribbean...

A new, wide-ranging selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most influential writings, this edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America’s greatest philosophers and poets. The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against...

**A collection of transformational, awe-provoking psychedelic experiences. ** In Tripping, Charles Hayes has gathered fifty narratives about unforgettable psychedelic experiences from an international array of subjects representing all walks of life--respectable Baby Boomers, aging hippies,...

In these thirty-two essays, the fashion critic of The New Yorker inquires into the meaning of fashion and the resonance that exists between fashion trends and the undercurrent of change in American culture

“To be up all night in the darkness of your youth but to be ready for the day to come…that was what going to Brown felt like.” —Jeffrey Eugenides In celebration of Brown University’s 250th anniversary, fifty remarkable, prizewinning writers and artists who went to Brown provide unique...

Amber Meyer brings together a collection of sardonic essays so uproariously funny and full of heart that fans are sure to fall in love with her voice and unique worldview. From the delicate use of itching powder to cannibal hamsters, Amber uses life's most painful and bizarre moments to reach new heights in love, family and understanding.

A collection of essays for ardent seamheads and casual baseball fans alike, The Utility of Boredom is a book about finding respite and comfort in the order, traditions, and rituals of baseball. It’s a sport that shows us what a human being might be capable of, with extreme dedication—whether we're...

The title cloud of Matt Donovan’s A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape refers to the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that in 79 AD buried the city of Pompeii under twenty feet of ash. It’s no surprise, then, that Donovan found the sacred ruins a site of inspiration and power, using their legacy...