Essays category: 9344 books

Writer and editor William Dean Howells was a towering figure in American literature. As a novelist, journalist and critic, he helped shape the American literary sensibility. This collection brings together some of Howells' best-known essays, sketches and reports.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • “One of the best and surest political humorists in America.”—Los Angeles Times In the most inebriating humor book of the year, the author of Steaming to Bamboola and The White House Mess goes straight for the funny bone with essays and mischief...

Letters from the Caribbean, Arizona, and Elsewhere is a compilation of essays selected from a column by author Ric Hernandez, who wrote them over a three-year period for the Trinidad Express. They were first published in a more abridged version as Letters from Port of Spain. Come along as the writer...

As time goes by, there are too many clocks in my house. If the power goes off, besides the time pieces themselves, there are those embedded in our refrigerator, stove, telephones, car, you name it. All awaiting a resetting. Our lives do, too. Of course life doesn't begin at seventy, nor did it end...

My late twenties have felt like a series of slow-motion epiphanies, each one sneaking up before slapping me in my newly acquired jowls. Everything I said I'd do 'by the time I'm thirty' as a glassy-eyed graduate is now in the 'by the time I'm forty' box. Much has been made of delayed adulthood of Gen...

Lovers of the printed book, arise! Thirty of today’s top writers are here to tell you you’re not alone. In Bound to Last,an amazing array of authors comes to the passionate defense of the printed book with spirited**,** never-before-published essays celebrating the hardcover or paperback...

“Read what you enjoy, not what bores you,” Nick Hornby tells us. That simple, liberating, and indispensable directive animates each installment of the celebrated critic and author’s monthly column in the Believer. In this delightful and never-musty tour of his reading life, Hornby tells us not...

An education in a portmanteau: George Steiner at The New Yorker collects his best work from his more than 150 pieces for the magazine. Between 1967 and 1997, George Steiner wrote more than 130 pieces on a great range of topics for The New Yorker, making new books, difficult ideas, and unfamiliar...

A one-of-a-kind exploration of the 19th century that ties the time period to our own through essays on a variety of topics in music, film, literature, and art. In Gaslight, Joachim Kalka delves into the mythos of the nineteenth century, exploring our fascination with its “auratic gaslight,”...

Relationships with our siblings stretch, as an old saying has it, all the way from the cradle to the grave. Few bonds in life are as significant, as formative, as lasting, and as frequently overlooked as those we share with our brothers and sisters. In this stellar, first-of-its-kind anthology,...

The best of short literary memoirs, essays, and reflections, many of which were written expressly for this collection. Also available The late Judith Kitchen, editor of the perennially popular anthologies Short Takes, In Short, and In Brief, was greatly influential in recognizing and establishing...

A groundbreaking critic who also made a name for herself as a writer of supernatural fiction, Violet Paget, writing under the name Vernon Lee, applied her unique analytical lens to the aesthetic and cultural sensibilities of numerous eras over the course of her career. This collection brings together...

"[Bennett] does what only the best writers can do—make us look at ourselves in a way we've never done before." —Michael Palin Untold Stories brings together some of the finest and funniest writing by one of England's best-known literary figures. Alan Bennett's first major collection...

A self-portrait of a great writer. A Short Autobiography charts Fitzgerald's progression from exuberant and cocky with "What I think and Feel at 25", to mature and reflective with "One Hundred False Starts" and "The Death of My Father." Compiled and edited by Professor James West, this revealing collection of personal essays and articles reveals the beloved author in his own words.