History Essays

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer–and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.

In this book, the noted historian, Dr. Kenneth Maxwell, provides an overview of Brazilian developments over the past decade. As the world has changed dramatically, Brazil’s role is changing as well. These essays have been written over the past decade and provide insights into Brazil’s domestic politics, the role of its military, its changing foreign policy role, and the significant conflicts of the past decade. These essays were written at the time of the events described, so it is a view of Brazil in “real time” so to speak. It is more like an intellectual photo album, than a movie...

Hear some of the greatest American essays ever written! This unabridged collection covers a multitude of subjects, including philosophy, politics, turkeys, and dogs.

One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists.

Mit den Erinnerungen eines Europäers hat Stefan Zweig seine persönliche, zugleich eine der besten Analysen der Jahrzehnte zwischen dem ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert und dem 2. Weltkrieg verfasst.

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what happened next.

From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.

When Dave Hickey was 12, he rode the surfer's dream: the perfect wave. And, like so many things in life we long for, it didn't quite turn out - he shot the pier and dashed himself against the rocks of Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach, which just about killed him. Fortunately, for Hickey and for us, he survived, and continues to battle, decades into a career as one of America's foremost critical iconoclasts, a trusted, even cherished no-nonsense voice commenting on the all-too-often nonsensical worlds of art and culture.

Everyone’s a critic, especially in the digital age—but no one takes on the movies like multiple award-winning author Harlan Ellison. Renowned both for fiction (A Boy and His Dog) and pop-culture commentary (The Glass Teat), Ellison offers in this collection twenty-five years’ worth of essays and film criticism.

Preeminent French cynic and philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) collected ideas and thoughts that were too short for pamphlets but worth saving for later development. These jottings eventually became the Philosophical Dictionary, filled with witty and wise entries on subjects as diverse as Atheism and Kissing - a compendium of the whole spectrum of Voltaire's ideas.

REVIEWS "One of that select group of men of science who also have high literary gifts."—Wall Street Journal "...these meditations offer the best appreciation of the adventure and beauty of the scientific quest, and they will inspire the young to join the great unfinished work."—Science "This is another collection of the lovely and haunting essays by Loren Eiseley, the naturalist writer who has given us so many delightful moments with his books....If there is a scientist anywhere writing more poetic prose, and making more sense with it, I have not encountered him....Eiseley seeks to ...

A princess of White Russian descent, Marie Vassiltchikov was 23 years old when she was trapped in Berlin by the outbreak of World War II. In these secret diaries, she chronicles the glamorous rise and shattering fall of the Nazi Party, as seen from the vantage point of her desk at the Foreign Ministry. She also describes how she and her friends became involved in a desperate conspiracy to murder Hitler.

The place is El Salvador in 1982, at the ghastly height of its civil war. The writer is Joan Didion, who delivers an anatomy of that country's particular brand of terror - its mechanisms, rationales, and intimate relation to United States foreign policy. As ash travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, and considers the distinctly Salvadoran grammar of the verb "to disappear," Didion gives us a book that is germane to any country in which bloodshed has become a standard tool of politics.

The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles, written between 1897 and 1888, advocating for the ratification of the United States Constitution. They serve as a primary source for interpretation of the Constitution, as they outline the philosophy and motivation of the proposed system of government.

This collection includes two of Emerson’s essays: History and Intellect. Emerson wrote most of his essays to be presented as lectures first, and later revised them for print. The essay History explores the nature and importance of historical understanding. Emerson holds that history is not simply a jumble of events and facts, but rather a living and dynamic force that can inspire and guide human action. In his essay Intellect, Emerson notes that the intellectual power of humans separates them from all other living beings on earth.

What was the real significance of William James's breakdown? Of the anti-Semitism in T.S. Eliot's writing? At each step in his latest journey through American cultural history, Menand has an original point to make.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung contains the wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs—the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s—edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rock critics, Greil Marcus.

As a lifelong learner fascinated by the myriad wonders of our world, I've always been driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand more. This book is a culmination of that curiosity, offering 30 diverse chapters that explore a wide range of scientific and thought-provoking topics. From the intricacies of spider web construction to the potential future of AI-assisted mindfulness meditation, each chapter delves into a unique area of interest. In creating this book, I harnessed the power of AI chatbots to sift through the vast ocean of information available on the Internet. These advanced ...

Here is Hemingway: the adventurer, the reporter, the man! More intimately than all his fiction, Hemingway the reporter reveals Hemingway the man, driving an ambulance through a bullet-barrage or leading guerrilla forces into Paris, always in the thick of the action. Here are his most sensational dispatches, the behind-the-scenes stories that became For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, and The Sun Also Rises.

This is Virginia Woolf’s first collection of essays, published in 1925. In them, she attempts to see literature from the point of view of the ‘common reader’ - someone whom she, with Dr Johnson, distinguished from the critic and the scholar. She read, and wrote, as an outsider: a woman set to school in her father’s library, denied the educational privileges of her male siblings - and with no fixed view of what constitutes ‘English literature’. What she produced is an eccentric and unofficial literary and social history from the 14th to the 20th centuries.