Essays category: 9344 books

Susan Sontag has said that her earliest idea of what a writer should be was "someone who is interested in everything." Thirty-five years after her first collection of essays, the now classic Against Interpretation, our most important essayist has chosen more than forty longer and shorter...

Written by “America’s finest essayist” (New Statesman), *At Home *brings together twenty-four essays on subjects ranging from Henry James to Nancy Reagan, Oscar Wilde to Oliver North, Hollywood to Mongolia. From the leaders and lunacies of contemporary America to reminiscences of his own childhood,...

Fourty-four essays on literature, politicking in government and in literary circles, and such celebrated contemporary characters as Norman Mailer, Dr. David Reuben, and Susan Sontag by the man Alfred Kazin has called "one of the best-informed and most biting polemicists of our overgrown American way of life."

In this collection of essays, Stephen Watson turns to the writers who have endured for him; to the places that have formed him; and always to the nature of writing and literature itself. The range is remarkable: he moves from Leonard Cohen to Dante, from Albert Camus to Allen Ginsberg, not excepting...

What defines Boston? Its history? Its landmarks? Its sports teams and shrines? Perhaps the question should be: Who defines Boston? From Henry David Thoreau to Dennis Lehane, Boston has been beloved by many of America’s greatest writers, and there is no better group of men and women to capture...

A Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Tolstoy was a master of realistic fiction and is widely considered one of the world's greatest novelists. He is best known for two long novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877).  The Kingdom of God Is Within You,...

This selection brings together the best prose writings of the great early nineteenth-century essayist Charles Lamb, whose shrewd wit and convivial style have endeared him to generations of readers. These pieces include early discussions of Hogarth and Shakespeare; masterly essays written under the...

What is life about but the continuous posing of the questions: what happens next, and what do we make of it when it arrives? In these highly evocative personal essays, Douglas Bauer weaves together the stories of his own and his parents’ lives, the meals they ate, the work and rewards and regrets...

This file includes: The Perfect Wagnerite: a Commenary on the Niblung's Ring (1898); Maxims for Revolutionists (1903); Treatise on Parents and Children (1910); and The Revolutionist's Handbook. According to Wikipedia: "George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a...

Volume 4 of a new selection of the best works of William Hazlitt (1778-1830), an energetic and unique essayist with much to offer the modern reader. He writes compellingly on many topics. Edited by Abeecy Deffh.

"Malcolm is always worth reading; it can be instructive to see how much satisfying craft she brings to even the most trivial article." --Phillip Lopate, TLS A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. One of BBC Culture, Lit Hub, O, the Oprah Magazine, and The New York Times's Books...

The Editors of the Saintsbury Memorial Volume have been encouraged by the welcome which that book received to make a final gathering of George Saintbury's writings. From a score of different sources they have chosen essays and papers that have lain uncollected, with their themes ranging from...

Comics and the U.S. South offers a wide-ranging and long overdue assessment of how life and culture in the United States South is represented in serial comics, graphic novels, newspaper comic strips, and webcomics. Diverting the lens of comics studies from the skyscrapers of Superman's Metropolis...

Looking back at the last thirty-five years of Vanity Fair stories on women, by women, with an introduction by the magazine’s editor in chief, Radhika Jones Gail Sheehy on Hillary Clinton. Ingrid Sischy on Nicole Kidman. Jacqueline Woodson on Lena Waithe. Leslie Bennetts on Michelle Obama....