Essays

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.

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

A collection of confessions from women around the world, Want is a revelatory, sensational and game-changing exploration of women’s sexuality that asks, and answers: How do women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous?

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

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....

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

More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil.

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....

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

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....

Ethical, pondering, and wondrous, adrienne maree brown’s Loving Corrections is a collection of love-based adjustments and reframes to grow our movements for liberation while navigating a society deeply fractured by greed, racism, and war.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through the eastern United States....

As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother....

Today’s authors and advocates share an intimate and hopeful collection of meaningful, smart, funny, sad, emotional, and inspiring essays on what it means to be Jewish, how life has changed since the attacks on October 7th, 2023, and the unique culture that brings this group together.

Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection - a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades....

Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the best-selling "Gonzo Papers" is now back in print....

“I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness to lose herself within the beauty of the natural world....

A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett's long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press....

From award-winning author Dorothy Allison comes a collection of critical essays about identity, gender politics, and queer theory, now with a new preface....

“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....

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

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....

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....

A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection, Creep tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them.

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.

More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

Contrairement aux histoires imaginées par Arthur Conan Doyle, les douze enquêtes racontées par David Grann sont bien réelles. Que l'auteur se penche sur l'infiltration d'un gang de détenus dans le système carcéral américain ou la traque de l'un des grands imposteurs du XXe siècle, affabulateur caméléon aux multiples identités, qu'il retrace la folle cavale d'un vieux braqueur de banque, le démantèlement d'un empire mafieux dans une cité de l'Ohio surnommé "Crimetown"....

His fiction is known to be some of the most terrifying in the genre of supernatural horror, but Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction book may be even scarier. Drawing on philosophy, literature, neuroscience, and other fields of study, Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy.

“Imparting some piece of yourself—any part—is arduous and warrants some kind of commendation,” writes guest editor Wesley Morris in his introduction. Both personal and personable, the essayists in this volume use their own vulnerability to guide listeners on excursions that unfold on uncomfortable edges. From contemplating the nuances of memory to exploring the complexities of family, romance, gender identity, illness, and death, Morris’s selection of essays presents a roundup of the thinkers who masterfully grapple with the issues of our time.

“Food and travel are natural companions,” writes guest editor Padma Lakshmi. From this pairing comes “the possibility of seeing anew, of examining how we make and assign meaning.” The essays in this year’s Best American Food and Travel Writing circle the world—from Dakar in Senegal, to Michoacán in south-central Mexico, to the Camino de Santiago in Spain—and deepen our understanding of our place in it.

Deborah Levy’s vital literary voice speaks about many things. On footwear: “It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers.” On public parks: “A civic garden square gentles the pace of the city that surrounds it, holding a thought before it scrambles.” Levy shares with us her most tender thoughts as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations.

Brilliant and uncompromising, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is essential listening. This new edition of award-winning author Kiese Laymon’s first work of nonfiction looks inward, drawing heavily on the author and his family’s experiences, while simultaneously examining the world—Mississippi, the South, the United States—that has shaped their lives. With subjects that range from an interview with his mother to reflections on Ole Miss football, Outkast, and the labor of Black women, these thirteen insightful essays highlight Laymon’s profound love of language.

A remarkable compilation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s reflections on love and its transformative power—a stellar addition to Dr. King’s archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.

“A Room of One’s Own” is one of Virginia Woolf’s most influential works and a cornerstone of the feminist movement. In this brilliant essay, Woolf explores the limitations faced by women in the early 20th century, using captivating prose and the poetic style characteristic of a novelist. She compellingly argues that the lack of financial independence and a private space are key barriers preventing women from fully developing their literary talents

The late 19th Century was a time of liberation. After the collapse of empires, people of all creeds demanded their equality. We begin with two speeches that represent the old order, by Bismarck. Between the two speeches he went from being Prussia’s last Minister President to being the Germany’s first Chancellor. A statesman in the oldest mold, he argues for nationalist dominance against forces temporal and religious.

Un relato asombroso de un incendio forestal colosal y una exploración panorámica de la relación rápidamente cambiante entre el fuego y la humanidad. En mayo de 2016, Fort McMurray, el centro neurálgico de la industria petrolera canadiense y el mayor proveedor extranjero de Estados Unidos, fue arrasado por un incendio forestal. La catástrofe, valorada en miles de millones de dólares, derritió vehículos, convirtió barrios enteros en bombas incendiarias y expulsó a 88.000 personas de sus hogares en una sola tarde.

An electric essay collection about Blackness, art, and dreaming of new possibilities in a time of constriction.

ダチョウはホンマにアホな鳥。でも地球を救ってくれるんです――。家族が入れ替わったことにも気づかないほど鈍感力が高いが、卵から取り出す抗体は感染症予防やがん治療、メタンガス削減に役立つとされ、世界中の企業が熱視線を送る。

看護の世界で75年、生と死に向き合い〝人間らしく生きる〟ことを問い続けてきた92歳の現役看護師。生命を輝かせ自己治癒力を引き出すには、あたり前の暮らしを見直すこと。ぴんぴんキラリ健康長寿の秘訣決定版。

Desde los zulos, obra que la misma autora denomina como híbrida, entre la crónica y la autoficción, es una recopilación de ensayos en donde aborda variadas temáticas como el racismo, la opresión, el clasismo, la invisibilización de las mujeres, la transfobia, la crítica y exposición de diversas teorías de los feminismos, entre otras conversaciones trascendentales para cuestionar nuestra actualidad, esta vez desde las periferias, dándole voz a espacios poco vislumbrados en la literatura.

累計５０万部突破！「やめてみた」シリーズのわたなべぽん最新刊。防災、お金、健康、そして住まいのこと。コロナ禍をきっかけに考えた、人生後半、これからも楽しく生きるための準備あれこれ。

Why do humans have a horror of skeletons? Is this aversion justified? What does it signify? Such are the animating questions of this essay by G. K. Chesterton, who acts as a witty defendant for humanity’s hidden form.

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.

Karl Kraus gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Aphoristiker deutscher Sprache. Ob berühmte Schriftsteller oder die Presse - nichts und niemand wurde von der Kritik seiner Feder verschont. Bekannte Künstler wie Stefan Zweig, Georg Trakl, Thomas Mann und andere zollten ihm Respekt, aber die Zahl seiner Feinde in Kunst und Gesellschaft war enorm. Als Vorleser hinterließ er aufgrund seiner Sprachgewalt und Persönlichkeit angeblich einen äußerst außergewöhnlichen Eindruck.

Karl Kraus gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Aphoristiker deutscher Sprache. Ob berühmte Schriftsteller oder die Presse - nichts und niemand wurde von der gnadenlosen Kritik seiner Feder verschont. Bekannte Künstler wie Stefan Zweig, Georg Trakl, Thomas Mann und andere zollten ihm Respekt, aber die Zahl seiner Feinde in Kunst und Gesellschaft war enorm. Als Vorleser hinterließ er aufgrund seiner Sprachgewalt und Persönlichkeit angeblich einen äußerst außergewöhnlichen Eindruck.

The great fantasy writer Lord Dunsany wrote very little in the way of fantasy after the onset of the First World War. This was partly because he was busy, having volunteered in 1915 and becoming a Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in Derry. However, the reality of the world bore in on our hero at this time, and it is not difficult to imagine that his heart moved to more serious concerns. Dunsany’s days of high fantasy, it seems, ended with the emergence of civil unrest in his nation.

Karl Kraus gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Aphoristiker deutscher Sprache. Ob berühmte Schriftsteller oder die Presse - nichts und niemand wurde von der gnadenlosen Kritik seiner Feder verschont. Bekannte Künstler wie Stefan Zweig, Georg Trakl, Thomas Mann und andere zollten ihm Respekt, aber die Zahl seiner Feinde in Kunst und Gesellschaft war enorm. Als Vorleser hinterließ er aufgrund seiner Sprachgewalt und Persönlichkeit angeblich einen äußerst außergewöhnlichen Eindruck.

【韓国の働く女性を中心に圧倒的共感！】エッセイスト、映画雑誌記者、ラジオパーソナリティ…

★韓国で10万部のベストセラー詩集、ついに日本上陸！★日韓累計80万部突破の大ベストセラー『花を見るように君を見る』著者最新刊は未発表新作詩集★人気ドラマ『ロマンスは別冊付録』（イ・ジョンソク×イ・ナヨン主演）劇中で使用され大反響！

Un appel à la résistance, à l'indignation et au retour du collectif pour préserver la démocratie et le bien commun.