Essays Social

In Don't Call Me Princess, Orenstein's most resonant and important essays are available for the first time in collected form, updated with both an original introduction and personal reflections on each piece. Her takes on reproductive justice, the infertility industry, tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, pink ribbon fear-mongering and the complications of girl culture are not merely timeless - they have, like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, become more urgent in our contemporary political climate.

Author Joni B. Cole worries that Vlad the Impaler may be a distant cousin. She feuds with a dead medium. She thinks (or overthinks) about insulting birthday cards, power trips, and the real reason writers hate Amazon. And she wishes, really wishes, all those well-meaning people would stop talking about Guatemala. At once irreverent and thought provoking, Cole's collection is a joy ride through eclectic essays that arrive smack on that sweet spot between soul searching and social commentary, between humor and heft.

Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling chops, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance”.

This is an essay on the unique teaching of J. Krishnamurti. It starts with the question "What is consciousness?" - and carefully proposes a holistic definition, after reviewing the various psychological and spiritual theories that deal with this subject. The author actually goes a step ahead and focuses on a more particular issue, a provocative question asked by K: “How to empty consciousness of its content?”

Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an alienating culture. Growing up as an immigrant in America means that one has to make one's way through a confusing tangle of conflicting cultures and expectations. And Porochista is pulled between the glitzy culture of Tehrangeles, an enclave of wealthy Iranians and Persians in LA, her own family's modest life and culture, and becoming an assimilated American.

In this thought-provoking essay, Life Coach and Author Joseff McKenneth Goodwin, explores how modern civilization, shaped by a “colonized dream,” manipulates our beliefs, relationships, and overall existence. Through a reflective journey, the essay challenges listeners to examine the hidden forces that influence their desires, values, and pursuit of success. Blending philosophical insights with spiritual perspectives, it uncovers how societal conditioning has trapped us in cycles of self-sacrifice, emotional disconnection, and constant striving for external validation.

Written by a former election campaign consultant for a major political party, How to Win an Indian Election takes listeners into the forbidden world of election war-rooms and gives them a glimpse of how strategy is formulated, what works with voters on the ground and what doesn't. Based on research, interviews and the author's own experiences, this book is invaluable for its insight into the inner workings of politics, political parties and what really makes for a winning election campaign.

The Challenge of Things joins earlier collections like The Reason of Things and Thinking of Answers but this time to collect Grayling's recent writings on the world in a time of war and conflict. In describing and exposing the dark side of things, he also explores ways out of the habits and prejudices of mind that would otherwise trap us forever in the deadly impasses of conflicts of all kinds.

Quintus Curtius is an attorney, writer, translator, and former marine officer. Expertly blending history, biography, philosophy, and the author's personal experience, this penetrating collection of essays achieves what one reviewer called "a perfect fluency in [a] dialogue with truth." The unifying theme is the nature of masculine identity and how that identity has been manifested. Drawing on examples from history and using sources in their original languages, Quintus Curtius' soaring vision combines lucid explanation with a passionate intensity like few other writers.

Una brillante colección de ensayos que abarca desde la deuda pública hasta la naturaleza de la ciencia ficción y la crisis climática.

Shortlisted for the 2012 Orwell Prize. 'As soon as we abandon our own reason', wrote Bertrand Russell, 'and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.' For over 40 years, Christopher Hitchens has proclaimed truth where others have spun falsehood and written, with passionate commitment, on matters that others fear to broach. This volume of essays encompasses Hitchens's writing over the past decade on politics, literature and religion.

We talk about achieving 'LGBTQ+ equality', but around the world, LGBTQ+ people are still suffering discrimination and extreme violence. How do we solve this urgent problem, allowing queer people everywhere the opportunity to thrive? In We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices explore this question. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they map new global frontiers in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

Dharma is our gradual awakening to the truth and the recognition of our unique path. Dharma is not something I chose; it chose me. These are some of my insights over 25 years of intensive study, practice, and teaching of yoga. Much of it centers on hatha yoga (postures and breath work) because that is the main practice in the West. Like other branches of yoga, it is a training of mind and heart so that we experience life with grace and equanimity. Insight arises from continual observation of the mind (citta).

Opposites and borders are never as clear as we think. With a novelist's eye for the unexpected, author Hari Kunzru takes listeners into the gray zone between life and death, public and private, black and white, and more. Along the way he meets philosophers and punk musicians, New Age gurus and space explorers, and together they investigate liminal spaces around the world. Into the Zone: Audio Essays includes a new foreword and afterword providing bookends to a series of brilliantly crafted intersections on history and the evolution of identity.

More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Much has transpired in the half-century since, and progress has been made in the issues that were close to Dr. King’s heart. Thankfully, the burning crosses, biting police dogs, and angry mobs of that day are long gone. But in their place, passivity has emerged. A passivity that must be addressed. That’s the aim of Letters to a Birmingham Jail. A collection of essays written by men of various ethnicities and ages.

For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself.

What songs have made up your life's soundtrack? Which have captured your every mood and deepest sentiments? Pop music, like no other form of entertainment or art, is capable of articulating our feelings, desires, joy, and pain. In a few soul-grabbing minutes, artists from every genre - from Little Richard to Lou Reed, Willie Nelson to Wu-Tang Clan, Sly and the Family Stone to the Rolling Stones - can help us understand our place in our own lives.

At Uluru, an invitation was issued to the Australian people. With the upcoming referendum, the nation will decide whether to accept that invitation. In this compelling, fresh and imaginative essay, Megan Davis draws out the significance and the promise of this “constitutional moment” – what it could mean for recognition and justice. Davis presents the Voice to Parliament as an Australian solution to an Australian problem. For Indigenous people, it is a practical response to “the torment of powerlessness”.

What defines Boston? Its history? Its landmarks? Its sports teams and shrines? Perhaps the question should be, who defines Boston? From Henry David Thoreau to Dennis Lehane, Boston has been beloved by many of America's greatest writers, and there is no better group of men and women to capture the heart and soul of the Hub. In Our Boston, editor Andrew Blauner has collected both original and reprinted essays from Boston-area writers past and present, all celebrating the city they love.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.