American Essays

Gregory Pardlo's father was a brilliant and charismatic man - a leading labor organizer who presided over a happy suburban family of four. But when he loses his job following the famous air traffic controllers' strike of 1981, he succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family's money on more and more ostentatious whims. In the face of this troubling model and disillusioned presence in the household, young Gregory rebels.

In the last few years, following the publication of his debut novel Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead has emerged as one of the most exciting and important new voices on Turtle Island. Now, in this first non-fiction work, Whitehead brilliantly explores Indigeneity, queerness, and the relationships between body, language and land through a variety of genres (essay, memoir, notes, confession). Making Love with the Land is a startling, heartwrenching look at what it means to live as a queer Indigenous person "in the rupture" between identities.

Martin Luther King Jr. may be America's most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. But despite his stature, the significance of King's writings and political thought remains underappreciated. In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry state that the marginalization of King's ideas reflects a romantic consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative - an effort not at radical reform but at "living up to" enduring ideals laid down by the nation's founders.

A luminous memoir-in-essays exploring place, identity, and what it means to grow up queer and Asian in the American South.

Trailer-park owners never use the word “trailer” and certainly not the term “trailer park.” At some point in time, even the Mobile Home Park Owners Association (MHPOA for short) realized that the word “trailer” had a negative connotation. When was the last time you saw a “trailer park community” advertised on TV? “Trailer park” has come to represent, in the minds of most Americans, men in stained work shirts dotted with drippings of food fat and car excrement returning home to take out life’s shortcomings on the innocents in their lives—the ol’ lady, the dog, and ...

In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers.

Ranging from the shattered gentility of Edith Wharton's heroines to racial confrontation in the songs of Nina Simone, American Rhapsody presents a kaleidoscopic story of the creation of a culture. Here is a series of deeply involving portraits of American artists and innovators who have helped to shape the country in the modern age. Claudia Roth Pierpont expertly mixes biography and criticism, history and reportage, to bring these portraits to life and to link them in surprising ways.

Showcasing the work of literary giants like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and authors whom listeners may be surprised to learn were "in the life", Black Like Us is the most comprehensive collection of fiction by African American lesbian, gay, and bisexual writers ever published.

In a series of 10 essays, spanning five centuries of history, beginning with the conquest of Mexico by Hermán Cortés and ending in 1992 San Francisco, Rodriguez explores the conflicts of race, religion, and cultural identity for Mexican-Americans across the landscape of his beloved California.

The Charles Dickens Non-Fiction Collection contains all of Charles Dickens' major published works of non-fiction. Although lesser known than the novels for which he is remembered, Dickens' eye for detail and character observation is seen just as clearly in his travelogues, essays, and letters, giving us an insight into Dickens and 1800s London, America, and Europe.

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of all George Orwell's greatest non-fiction: three full-length books, a collection of his most well-renowned essays and the complete collection of his poetry.

Khabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions: What does it mean to belong, and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country?

"Hace tiempo que no leía algo tan bueno. En pana puede leerse como una autobiografía—porque es la biografía de unos autos—o un ménage à trois entre novela, ensayo y poesía, o una exagerada nota al pie acerca del copiloto como un pequeño dios. Martín Cinzano ha escrito un libro inolvidable, muy divertido, melancólico, vertiginoso e introspectivo: callejero, carretero y carrilero." —Alejandro Zambra

Essays of bullying, heartbreak, racism, and confidence, Ashley taps into her own past and shares those stories that made her who she is today as she seamlessly weaves in parallel experiences that both she and Mrs. Obama have faced in their separate childhoods as well as their adult lives. Open, searing, and honest, these are stories listeners will feel seen with. listeners who are growing and learning as they move forward through life's triumphs and pitfalls will undoubtedly gravitate to and find comfort within its audio.

John Edgar Wideman, renowned for his award-winning fiction and memoirs, first made waves in American literature with his sharp, insightful commentary. Now, for the first time, his extensive body of long-form journalism and essays, personally curated by Wideman himself and spanning nearly five decades of his remarkable career, showcases his intellectual depth and lasting influence.

I det berømte titelessay Elefanten og i det efterfølgende essay En henrettelse leverer Orwell en svidende kritik af det britiske koloniale styre. Baseret på egne oplevelser som officer i det koloniale politi i Burma kaster han et undersøgende blik på magt, magtudøvelse og underkastelse. Herefter følger klassikeren Sådan dør de fattige samt en række af de mesterlige indlæg, Orwell skrev til sin ugentlige klumme i Tribune i årene 1943-47 under overskriften As I please.

Award-winning viral curator and poet Natasha Marin follows up her acclaimed Black Imagination with a brilliant new collection of sharply rendered, breathtaking reflections from more than one hundred Black voices.

For almost a century after the U.S. Constitution went into effect, few Americans seem to have questioned the legitimacy of the Revolution. Since the Progressive generation of historians began the work of serious criticism and revision, however, students of American life have largely learned to live with a more complicated understanding of the revolutionary legacy. Smith's treatment of the era charts space for libertarians to both criticize and revere the American heritage.

'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' is the best-known phrase from the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents of the eighteenth century and the whole Enlightenment Age. Written by Thomas Jefferson, it is frequently evoked today as a shorthand for that idea we call the 'American Dream'. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates - of a free and happy world - owes a great deal to British thinkers too.

Blistering and deeply personal, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son records Russell's quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his persistent alienation, and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father.