Essays category: 9344 books

Cross Words refers to cultural hybrids, trans-cultural alliances, and associations. This fascinating compendium documents—in essays, conversations, and socratic raps—the vital work poets perform when they write across borders.Anne Waldman is the author of more than forty collections of poetry,...

MANDELA WAS LATE traverses the inner universe of a satiric genius who maybe should be getting out of the house a little more often. Wrapped in his cocoon of Hollywood residuals, battling his own (mounting?) foibles day by day, former Seinfeld writer/producer Peter Mehlman somehow manages to see the...

The London Library is the world's largest independent library. Founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle (in reaction to the "museum headache" brought on by the crowds in the British Museum Reading Room), it has become a haven for readers, writers and all who draw strength, solace or inspiration...

"John D'Agata is an alchemist who changes trash into purest gold." —Guy Davenport, Harper's John D'Agata journeys the endless corridors of America's myriad halls of fame and faithfully reports on what he finds there. In a voice all his own, he brilliantly maps his terrain in lists,...

The Devil is alive and well and living in America, Andrei Codrescu tells us, and with good reason. Nowhere else in the world--not even in Codrescu's native Transylvania--is he taken quite as seriously. When Codrescu gently derided the fundamentalist Christian belief in Rapture ("a pre-apocalyptic...

Spike Gillespie tells it like it is. Whether she's writing about men, mothering or money, she cuts to the chase, unabashedly recounting the exhilaration and uncertainty she is forever encountering along the odd path that is her life. Gillespie approaches her subjects with a keen eye for curious details...

Beat Generation great Jack Kerouac traverses the vast landscape of American counterculture in this raucous and insightful collection In these collected articles, essays, and wild autobiographical tales, Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, leads readers down the highways and through the myriad...

This volume collects the finest essays from the second half of the Believer's decade-long (and counting) run. The Believer, the McSweeney's-published four-time nominee for the National Magazine Award, is beloved for tackling everything from pop culture to ancient literature with the same sagacity...

Life Is Short-Art Is Shorter is not just the first anthology to gather both mini-essays and short-short stories; readers, writers, and teachers will get will get an anthology; a course’s worth of writing exercises; a rally for compression, concision, and velocity in an increasingly digital, post-religious...

With When Village with Village Comes to Parle, Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler presents over five dozen unique essays, articles, and vignettes covering an eclectic range of topics. Travel the world with Dr. Sadler and her husband as she details some of their adventures abroad. Experience a thought-provoking...

For some people baseball means a memory-of a certain dusty ball field on a certain summer day, or the first time they walked into a major league park and saw the perfect emerald playing field. For some, baseball means one heartbreaking or heroic moment. And for others, it means a father, a friend,...

New writings—on rooms, buildings, and the spaces and structures that surround us—from Robert Coover, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanna Scott, and more.   From huts to houses to high-rises, childhood bedrooms to churches, the spaces we occupy and pass through shape our memories and perceptions, often...

Tom Oatmeal is just a regular guy thinking about things like hair transplants for dogs and hand-to-hand combat with bus drivers. Truly the most average man in the world, his collection of essays reads like the fever dreams of a man both painfully clueless and totally lacking in impulse control. They’re...

An essential collection of the most noteworthy essays and poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a leading architect of the Transcendentalist movement, which championed self-reliance, individualism, and personal potential. THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that...