Essay Essays

A collection of gorgeously written and timely pieces in which prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships. In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: what might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together? Full of energy, curiosity, and compassion, it is essential listening from one of our most brilliant writers.

A new rip-roaring essay collection from the smart, edgy, hilarious, unabashedly raunchy, and best-selling Samantha Irby. Irby is 40, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friendzoned by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state....

What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on, invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever-expanding freedom.

When Roland Barthes's groundbreaking Mythologies first appeared in English in 1972, it was immediately recognized as one of the most significant works in French theory - yet nearly half of the essays from the original work were missing. This new edition of Mythologies is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic. It includes the brilliant "Astrology", never published in English before.

Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark.

In Suppose a Sentence, Brian Dillon, whom John Banville has called "a literary flâneur in the tradition of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin", has written a sequel of sorts to Essayism, turning his attention to the oblique and complex pleasures of the sentence. A series of essays prompted by a single sentence - from Shakespeare to James Baldwin, John Ruskin to Joan Didion - this new book explores style, voice, and language, along with the subjectivity of reading.

Australia is on the brink of momentous change, but only if its citizens and politicians can come to new terms with the past. In this inspiring essay, Mark McKenna considers the role of history in making and unmaking the nation. From Captain Cook to the frontier wars, from Australia Day to the Uluru Statement, we are seeing fresh debates and recognitions. McKenna argues that it is time to move beyond the history wars and that truth-telling about the past will be liberating and healing. This is an urgent essay about a nation’s moment of truth.

When Kristi stopped drinking, she started noticing things. Like when you give up a debilitating habit, it leaves a space, one that can’t easily be filled by mocktails or ice cream or sex or crafting. And when you cancel Rosé Season for yourself, you’re left with just summer, and that’s when you notice that the women around you are tanked - that alcohol is the oil in the motors that keeps them purring when they could be making other kinds of noise. In her sharp, incisive debut essay collection, Coulter reveals a portrait of a life in transition.

Everyday life is filled with opportunities to learn, grow, and flourish, yet it’s easy to miss these chances if you don’t recognize their value. As you read the eighty-seven essays in this insightful collection written by Anne Marie Bennett, one of Seena Frost’s chosen SoulCollage® Trainers, you will begin to see yourself and the world around you with fresh eyes. Illustrating the intuitive art process of SoulCollage®, in which creating your own deck of collaged cards helps you gain access to deep personal wisdom, Bennett’s essays cover life lessons, community, animal guides, ...

Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon's No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice—for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples.

Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents.

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus - The Minimalists - left their six-figure careers, jettisoned many of their material possessions, and started focusing on life's most important aspects. And they never looked back.

Simplicity: Essays is The Minimalists' fifth book and second essay collection, a follow-up to their bestselling Minimalism: Essential Essays. In the two years since the authors quit their six-figure corporate jobs and embraced simpler lives, they have written more than 200 essays on the subject of simple living.

The digital revolution has been corrupted. What began as a celebration of freedom has become a machine for monitoring and control. What began as history’s greatest dream of enlightenment has been twisted into an anti-intellectual nightmare of indoctrination. In 12 essays, several already well-known but newly revised in this volume, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger stakes out a hard-headed position in favor of the ideals of the digital revolution.

Discussions of the First Amendment often focus on specific freedoms that the text cites, including religion, press, and assembly. But philosopher Tara Smith’s new book usefully reminds us that those particular freedoms—and many more that Smith and the other contributors examine—are united by a crucial principle: intellectual freedom. The book demonstrates that the free mind is indispensable for a free society. —Nadine Strossen Tara Smith’s masterful celebration of intellectual freedom is both subtle and forceful. She unhesitatingly carves out a place for herself as a warrior for ...

This essay, short via only 17 Kindle pages, but in no small measure, points to the egregious and continuous act of the U.S. Government not honoring its documented promise to distribute reparations (Military # 15) to the descendants of African Slaves since the end of Civil War, 1865 AD. For your convenience, I pose a short litany of questions that points to the compelling argument for 'Reasonable Cause for Reparations' for the Descendants of African Slaves: 1. What were the two-legal slavery periods in America? 2. When was the 1st Freedom document issued for the [overground] White Slave ...

Lars Horn's Voice of the Fish, the latest Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize winner, is an interwoven essay collection that explores the trans experience through themes of water, fish, and mythology, set against the backdrop of travels in Russia and a back injury that left Horn temporarily unable to speak. In Horn's adept hands, the collection takes shape as a unified book: short vignettes about fish, reliquaries, and antiquities serve as interludes between longer essays, knitting together a sinuous, wave-like form that flows across the book.

Ideas Have ConsequencesThese essays are inspired by and related to the theological thriller novel, Cruel Logic: The Philosopher Killer.≤/p The essays explore the crisis of Western Civilization vs. the woke Left, Christian apologetics and Christian deconstruction, the origins of wokeness and its war on reality, ethics and the moral argument for the existence of God. Chapters include: Could You Defend Your Beliefs If Your Life Depended On It? The Tragedy of Evangelical Christian Deconstruction America’s Cultural Revolution of Woke Violence The Problem of Evil and the Existence of God A ...

From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.

Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking fiction. Less visible were his extraordinary nonfiction essays, published as introductions to anthologies and in small journals, revealing countless facets of Kenan's life and work. Flying under the radar, these writings were his most personal and autobiographical. Here too is his intellectual coming of age. This powerful collection is a testament to a great mind, a great soul, and a great writer.