Short Essays

“What's most compelling about a scientific story is the way it challenges us to think about the concepts we take for granted,” writes guest editor Carl Zimmer in his introduction. The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing probe at the ordinary and urge us to think more deeply about our place in the world around us.

Karan Johar is synonymous with success, panache, quick wit, and outspokenness, which sometimes inadvertently creates controversy and makes headlines. KJo, as he is popularly called, has been a much-loved Bollywood film director, producer, actor, and discoverer of new talent. But who is the man behind the icon we all know? Honest, heart-warming and insightful, An Unsuitable Boy is both the story of the life of an exceptional filmmaker at the peak of his powers and of an equally extraordinary human being who shows you how to survive and succeed in life.

Canceled Plans? –Check! Panic and Fear? – Check! Self- Isolation? – Check! Missing Friends? – Check! Gaining Weight? – Check! Binge-Watching TV? – Check! Lengthy Self - diggings? – Check! Hope? – Check, check, check! Who would have thought that Global Pandemic, Self-Isolation, Cluster, and a Lockdown were to become the trendiest words in 2020? Who would have imagined the world would freeze and people would stay home shattered with fear, panic, uncertainty towards their future? How do we adjust to this changing reality, when none of our questions have answers when plans turn ...

Having had occasion to look around for “something to read,” with long and short pieces that would not prove too deeply engaging, Leonard Wibberley—author of The Mouse that Roared as well as over 100 other novels—curated a personal selection of such choices from his writings. They are both published and unpublished works by this thoughtful and humorous man. Read all at once if one is so inclined, or savored in smaller samples, they offer selections to fit almost any mood. There is Prevarication Jones for a bit of humor, Concerning the Divinity for some personal philosophy, The ...

Christopher Buckley at his best: an extraordinary, wide-ranging selection of essays both hilarious and poignant, irreverent and delightful. In his first book of essays since his 1997 best seller, Wry Martinis, Buckley delivers a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing. Listening to these essays is the equivalent of being in the company of a tremendously witty and enlightening companion.

David Bain offers ten essays on writing, with an eye toward helping new writers gain their footing and keeping the more seasoned scribe motivated. It also includes his essay "Basic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for Newbies" which has already helped hundreds of beginning indie authors. A longtime college English prof and former newspaper bureau chief, Bain infuses these essays on the writing life with years of teaching, editing, and indie publishing experience, using an easygoing yet incisive style.

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.

From one of America’s most beloved authors, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces, offering a fresh perspective on the remarkable literary mind of Harper Lee. The Land of Sweet Forever combines Lee’s early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume offering an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice.

Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced.

This short story chronicles one particular night in Samantha's life where she attended an ugly Christmas sweater party and crossed paths with a boy she went to high school with. Throughout her senior year, he seemed to linger on the peripherary of her life, though he never seemed interested enough to take action. Now that they find themselves alone in a mutual friend's kitchen at the party, adrift in a sea of strangers, defenses crumble and a true human connection sparks. This short story is told from the perspective of an older Smantha reflecting on her past and wondering what could have ...

Is it possible to divorce your ex and still love you former mother-in-law? Take a trip to the bayou with Louisiana Mystery Writer Eric Wilder. Hear some of his favorite family stories and try twenty recipes from possibly the greatest Cajun-Creole cook on earth: his former mother-in-law. Lily's Little Cajun Cookbook is filled with humor, mystery, tall tales and the wonderful aroma of Cajun and Creole cuisine.

Word Play is a collection of 101 short stories, essays, and insights to help you improve your communication skills. This book discusses a wide range of topics to build a deeper perception of human dynamics so you can communicate with clarity, power, and warmth. In Word Play, you will learn: how to form allies and grow a network from the ground up, the art of consistency and how to stay disciplined, how to stop people-pleasing, fundamental truths regarding the field of dark psychology, and more.

In the Adirondacks, short carries are portages between waterways, and this book is a collection of short essays about wilderness, outdoor adventures, natural history and small town life - all of which connect with each other through the author's voice and deep sense of place.

Short-Reads Include: Playbook, Algorithm Audit, Notice of Liabilities, Mased, Lined of Credit, IoB, Pole Star, Stargate, General Discrepancy, Real Mail, Kakistocracy

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s deeply personal essay explores racial conflict through the prism of his childhood and the influence of his father, a police officer who walked the beat between two worlds.

"In almost any culture, at any time, you can find food writing,” writes guest editor Mark Bittman in his introduction. “Food means growing and hardship, and health and medicine, and work and holiday. In its abundance it is a gift and a joy, and in its absence a curse and a tragedy. If a culture has writing, that culture has food writing.” The stories in this year’s Best American Food Writing are brilliant, eye-opening windows into the heart of our country’s culture.

America's beloved storyteller will guide and thrill your imagination with these classic tales. Join Gene Edwards as he recounts his favorite stories from more than 50 years of travel and ministry. Considered the Paul Harvey of Christian writers, Gene Edwards is one of America's most beloved authors. Stories I Love to Tell, his new book, is a compilation of tales that continue to move audiences.

Andrew Sullivan, “one of the most influential journalists of the last three decades” (The New York Times) and founding editor of The Daily Dish presents a collection of 60 his most iconic and powerful essays of social and political commentary from The New Republic, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, and more.

With a foreword by Neil Gaiman Terry Pratchett has earned a place in the hearts of readers the world over with his bestselling Discworld series – but in recent years he has become equally well-known and respected as an outspoken campaigner for causes including Alzheimer’s research and animal rights.