Essays

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

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

In New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explore the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife....

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....

An exhilarating new collection from the award-winning author of The Boys of My Youth and In Zanesville, Festival Days presents Jo Ann Beard at the height of her powers, using her flawless prose to reveal all that is tender and timeless beneath the way we live now....

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....

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....

In this candid and curious essay collection, Jonathan takes a thoughtful, in-depth look at timely topics through the lens of his own personal experience—instances that have required him to learn, grow, and back handspring layout to a better understanding of the world around him....

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

In this intimate, beautifully crafted collection, Driver writes with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs....

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

You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright, as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of Obvious Child. But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style....

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....

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in 20th-century literature....

In this surprising essay, international bestselling humor writer David Sedaris shares the rewards of a book tour and his devoted readers’ worst-kept secrets....

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....

Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband....

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

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

An ardent steward of the land, fearless traveler, and unrivaled observer of nature and culture, Barry Lopez died after a long illness on Christmas Day 2020. The previous summer, a wildfire had consumed much of what was dear to him in his home place and the community around it....

In this brilliant selection of essays, the author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from debt and tech to the climate crisis and freedom and how to define granola....

The Cool Side of My Pillow is a collection of essays. Don’t let that fancy word fool you. I’m not trying to get highbrow or rant myself blue, but there are experiences and observations outside of the entertainment industry that I feel are worth sharing....

But What If We're Wrong? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past....

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche furthers his pursuit of a clarity that is less tainted by imposed prejudices....

In this thought-provoking collection of essays, poems, and short reflections, Frederick Joseph contemplates these questions and more as he explores issues of masculinity and patriarchy from both a personal and cultural standpoint....

Cohen's subjects in A Place to Read can be as commonplace as golfing with close friends, amateur astronomy, birding, or learning to fly at the age of sixty. But he asks difficult questions about how we are grounded in space and time, how we are affected by our names, how a healthy person can turn into a hypochondriac, and how we might commune with the dead. And throughout he measures, compares and interprets his experiences through the lens of six decades of reading.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and his ideology was disseminated through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures. 

Here is Virginia Woolf at her most entertaining and informative, relishing the portraits and insights she presents as she surveys a varied collection of individuals in English society and English literature. In The Common Reader Volume 2, (published in 1932), the essay lives on and even more so in this sensitive and engaging book by Georgina Sutton.

Keith Gessen was nearing forty and hadn’t given much thought to the idea of being a father. He assumed he would have kids, but couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a parent, or what kind of parent he would be. Then, one Tuesday night in early June, the distant idea of fatherhood came careening into view: Raffi was born, a child as real and complex and demanding of his parents’ energy as he was singularly magical.

In the overheated debate about immigration, we often lose sight of the humanity at the heart of this complex issue. The immigrants and refugees living precariously in the United States are mothers and fathers, children, neighbors, and friends. Individuals propelled by hope and fear, they gamble their lives on the promise of America, yet their voices are rarely heard.

An ardent steward of the land, fearless traveler, and unrivaled observer of nature and culture, Barry Lopez died after a long illness on Christmas Day 2020. The previous summer, a wildfire had consumed much of what was dear to him in his home place and the community around it—a tragic reminder of the climate change of which he’d long warned.

David’s audiobook is one of despair and hope; one that paints a picture of our society that is both dark and broken up by fleeting rays of light. From his plight on the streets in one of England’s richest regions, to the interactions of people he observes and encounters every day, to the impacts of Covid-19 and the changing seasons--this is poetry and prose at its most powerful. It is an audiobook that reveals the double-talk of homeless service provision--a society that consigns people as worthless without knowing their backgrounds.

Drawing on more than 30 years of therapeutic encounters with people facing hurdles in their love lives, former chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council Susanna Abse takes us deep inside one of the most fascinating realms there is: other people's relationships. From dealing with infidelity to navigating our changing role within a single relationship over the course of a lifetime, Tell Me the Truth About Love sheds vivid light on the human heart and its struggle to both embrace life's greatest gift and protect itself from pain. 

In this thought-provoking collection of essays, poems, and short reflections, Frederick Joseph contemplates these questions and more as he explores issues of masculinity and patriarchy from both a personal and cultural standpoint. From fatherhood, and “manning up” to abuse and therapy, he fearlessly and thoughtfully tackles the complex realities of men’s lives today and their significance for society, lending his insights as a Black man.

Beneath the self-assured and serious faces we wear, every human life is full of longing, guesswork, and confusion—a scramble to do the best we can and make everything up as we go along. In these wide-ranging essays, Jon Mooallem chronicles the beauty of our blundering and the inescapability of our imperfections. 

Old Truths and New Clichés collects nineteen essays—most of them previously unpublished in English—by Isaac Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic vision throughout an astonishing and prolific literary career spanning more than six decades. Expanding on themes reflected in his best-known work, the book illuminates in new ways the rich intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and biographical background of Singer's singular achievement as the first Yiddish-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In this intimate, beautifully crafted collection, Driver writes with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs—from being the only student in her acting school not taken on by an agent to being discovered at a rave in a muddy field in the English countryside; shooting to fame in one of the most influential films of the 1990s and being nominated for an Academy Award; and finding the true light of her life, her son. 

This engaging collection of essays was originally published in The Daily Post Athenian newspaper during the tumultuous two-year period of 2020-2021. The author, Kathryn L. Hunter, who holds a masters degree in Forestry from Yale University, deftly weaves natural science with social commentary into each article, creating a result that is both entertaining and wise.