Essays

From New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning author Evan Osnos comes a timely and provocative collection of essays exploring American oligarchy and the culture of excess, providing a wry, unfiltered look at how the ultrarich shape our social and political landscape.

David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all....

Number-one best-selling author John Green presents a deeply moving and insightful collection of personal essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast....

An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights

One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought....

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation - and humor - toward middle age and mortality....

In I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know. She jokes through her difficult adolescence where she must parent her own parents.

The best-selling author of The Bomber Mafia focuses on "minor geniuses" and idiosyncratic behavior to illuminate the ways all of us organize experience in this "delightful" (Bloomberg News) collection of writings from The New Yorker....

Donald Hall has lived a remarkable life of letters, a career capped by a National Medal of the Arts, awarded by the president....

James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil-rights movement with his eloquent manifesto....

David Sedaris’s best stories and essays, spanning his remarkable career - as selected and read by the author himself. Featuring fresh and classic recordings, including a new essay and an interview exclusive to the audiobook....

One of America's greatest living literary legends invites you think for yourself in this compelling narrative of manipulation, power, and the human condition.

The great insights of the Stoics are spread over a wide range of ancient sources. This book brings them all together for the first time. It systematically presents what the various Stoic philosophers said on every important topic, accompanied by an eloquent commentary that is clear and concise....

The collection of 10 absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter....

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying collection of essays that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives....

In Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality.

In Dad is Fat, stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, who’s best known for his legendary riffs on Hot Pockets, bacon, manatees, and McDonald's, expresses all the joys and horrors of life with five young children....

Walking in My Joy is a collection of electric stories by the one and only, super hilarious Jenifer Lewis. Her commentary on what’s happening in the world today, told through her outrageous real-life adventures, will have you laughing out loud, while her insightful messages touch your soul....

“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart....

In ten brilliantly written chapters, Stephen King delivers one colorful observation after another about the great stories, books, and films that comprise the horror genre—from Frankenstein and Dracula to The Exorcist, The Twilight Zone, and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.

First published in 1979, Joan Didion's The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it.

Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon...

Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time....

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures....

Born and raised in idyllic Sullivan's Island, Susan Hayes navigated through her turbulent childhood with humor, spunk, and characteristic Southern sass....

A debut essay collection by the inimitable cultural critic Maris Kreizman—an introspective, searing account of the life experiences that have pushed this former “good Democrat” even further to the political left.

Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator.

There are moments throughout our lives when we discover an artist, an album, a film, or a cultural artifact that leaves a lasting impression, helping inform how we understand the world, and ourselves, moving forward. In No Sense in Wishing, Lawrence Burney explores these profound interactions with incisive and energizing prose, offering us a personal and critical perspective on the people, places, music, and art that transformed him.

昔の記憶って、いったん思い出すと、どうして止まらなくなるのだろう――。実家は、元花街、東京・尾久のとんかつ屋「どん平」。話題作にひっぱりだこの個性派俳優が綴る破天荒な家族と愉快な街の記憶

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s classic six-part essay, the iconic Modernist writer takes on the misogyny of writing, publishing, and creativity in her time. Through the imagined sister of William Shakespeare, who in her argument possesses the same talent and intellect as the famous playwright, Woolf lays out the fundamental truth that one requires room to express creativity and time to explore and see it through. Genius unexpressed is genius nonetheless, and had Shakespeare’s sister the means to make her own art, she would have had the same lasting legacy as her brother.