Essays category: 9344 books

A rigorous examination of the workings of fiction by the novelist Robert Boswell, "one of America's finest writers" (Tom Perrotta) Robert Boswell has been writing, reading, and teaching literature for more than twenty years. In this sparkling collection of essays, he brings this vast...

A brilliant and thought-provoking collection of articles, profiles, and opinions from one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed African American writers A journalist, novelist, and educator, John A. Williams was never afraid to rock boats or take aim at society’s most sacred institutions,...

Mary McCarthy, one of our most brilliant and beloved authors, serves up wit, insight, and her unique worldview in this diverse collection of essays In provocatively titled pieces such as “The Contagion of Ideas,” “Tyranny of the Orgasm,” and “No News, or,What Killed the Dog,” Mary...

The opening salvo in G. K. Chesterton’s war against vagueness, affectation, and group think in life and art Part literary criticism, part jeremiad, and part metaphysical inquiry, Heretics is G. K. Chesterton’s groundbreaking attempt to cull the values, belief systems, and moral peccadilloes...

Each edition of this unique series marries a collection of previously published essays with detailed practical information, creating a colorful and deeply absorbing pastiche of opinions and advice. Each book is a valuable resource -- a compass of sorts -- pointing vacationers, business travelers,...

In this collection of stories and essays, the beloved author of the classic, best-selling novel A Lesson Before Dying shares the inspirations behind his books and his reasons for becoming a writer. Told in the simple and powerful prose that is a hallmark of his craft, these writings by Ernest J. Gaines...

In this thought-provoking volume, David R. Roediger has brought together some of the most important black writers throughout history to explore the question: What does it really mean to be white in America? From folktales and slave narratives to contemporary essays, poetry, and fiction, black...

On Election Day in 2016, it seemed unthinkable to many Americans that Donald Trump could become president of the United States. But the victories of the Obama administration hid from view fundamental problems deeply rooted in American social institutions and history. The election’s consequences...

Essays from the award-winning New Yorker writer and author of This Old Man: “Witty, worldly, deeply elegiac, and…heartbreaking.”—The Boston Globe For more than fifty years, as both editor of and contributor for The New Yorker, Roger Angell has honed a reputation as a master of the autobiographic...

This marvelous collection of autobiographical essays by the celebrated, much-adored Fisher covers her life, family, food and adventures.

The first collection of nonfiction from the author Tony Kushner calls “one of the best novelists writing in the world today” Over a thirty-year period, novelist Christopher Bram witnessed, and lived through, the powerful experiences of coming out, the AIDS epidemic, gay marriage, and the...

Something has changed. After the horrors of World War II, people everywhere believed that it could never happen again, but today the evidence is unmistakable that anti-Semitism is dramatically on the rise once more. The torching of European synagogues, suicide terror in Israel, the relentless...

Celebrated playwright and magnetic wit Wendy Wasserstein has been firmly rooted in New York’s cultural life since her childhood of Broadway matinees, but her appeal is universal. Shiksa Goddesscollects thirty-five of her urbane, inspiring, and deeply empathic essays–all written when she was in...

John Updike’s memoirs consist of six Emersonian essays that together trace the inner shape of the life, up to the age of fifty-five, of a relatively fortunate American male. The author has attempted, his Foreword states, “to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen...