Essays Letters category: 7676 books

“Writing an essay is like catching a wave,” posits guest editor Ariel Levy. “To catch a wave, you need skill and nerve, not just moving water.” This year’s writers are certainly full of nerve, and have crafted a wide range of pieces awash in a diversity of moods, voices, and stances. Leaving...

Follow the thoughts of essayist, poet and American Transcendentalism founder Ralph Waldo Emerson as he discovered his own belief system in the anthology "Self-Reliance and Other Essays." In "Self-Reliance," Emerson explained that standing on one's own two feet against society was essential to forming...

**"Alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny."—New York Times “Deliciously readable . . . Donald Hall, if abandoned by the muse of poetry, has wrought his prose to a keen autumnal edge.” — Wall Street Journal** His entire life, Donald Hall dedicated himself to the...

Powerful personal narratives by the renowned author of Living Up the Street. These small essays are not unlike Dutch paintings of the sixteenth century. They are clear and precisely rendered, and are either thematically domestic scenes or pedestrian in their observations of the ordinary. There...

Boldly and unapologetically told, the essays featured in this powerful collection exemplify strength and resilience as these writers—published authors as well as fresh voices—take their truths public. Filled with hope, humor, and determination, these stories tackle love, loss, friendship, identity,...

Samuel Steward (1909–93) was an English professor, a tattoo artist for the Hells Angels, a sexual adventurer who shared the considerable scope of his experiences with Alfred Kinsey, and a prolific writer whose publications ranged from scholarly articles to gay erotica (the latter appearing under...

Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody's list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Joseph...

A Handful of Mischief: New Essays on Evelyn Waugh is a collection of essays based on presentations at the Evelyn Waugh Centenary Conference at Hertford College, Oxford, in 2003. There are twelve different essays by authors from various countries, including Australia, Canada, Russia, the United Kingdom,...

Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody’s list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Joseph...

For fans of John Jeremiah Sullivan, Leslie Jamison, Geoff Dyer, and W. G. Sebald, the twenty-one essays in David Searcy’s debut collection are captivating, daring—and completely unlike anything else you’ve read before. Forging connections between the sublime and the mundane, this is a work of...

Collectors Edition! Ralph Waldo Emerson is America's greatest essayist and one of its greatest orators. To call him an essayist indeed sells him rather short and is very misleading. Most think of essays as interminable, dry, and academic, full of jargon, polysyllables, and other esoterica making them...

‘Wonky, idiosyncratic, fragmentary, paradoxical, drunk on words, the essay has … a uniquely human thumbprint.’ —Geordie Williamson In The Best Australian Essays 2015, Geordie Williamson compiles the year’s outstanding short non-fiction. Read Helen Garner on condescension, DBC Pierre...

‘Some essays in this collection plunged me into thought. Some caused me to weep. Some brought tears of laughter. Some essays won me over by the power of their imagination. Some by their analytic clarity. Some by their excruciating honesty. Some by the pain of things past or present faced without...

David Hume (1711-1776) is regarded as one of the most significant literary figures in the history of the Scottish Enlightenment and Western philosophy. A Scottish born historian, philosopher, economist, and essayist, Hume is especially known for his concentration in philosophical empiricism and skepticism....