Beautiful Essays

One of America’s most trusted theologians offers spiritual inspiration for every week of the year. This program is read by the author. A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance offers an essay for every week in the seasons of the Christian year: From Advent and...

Paris Review contributor Katy Kelleher explores our obsession with gorgeous things, unveiling the fraught histories of makeup, flowers, perfume, silk, and other beautiful objects. April recommended reading by the New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Goodreads, Jezebel, Christian Science...

“A book about a rare life, profound love, profound grief, anxiety, self-assurance, empowerment, aging, loss, and joy. It is nuanced, complex, insightful, helpful, and constantly surprising.” —Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of These Precious Days Writer and former model...

Includes an introduction written and read by Jesmyn Ward, a foreword written and read by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, and an afterword written and read by Professor James L. W. West III The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family...

What if the empty minute you keep fleeing is the one minute in the day that actually belongs to you? We treat boredom as a malfunction: something to patch with a screen before it can finish its sentence. The Beautiful Ache makes a different claim. Boredom is not emptiness. It is the un-commanded interval in a commanded life, and holding it, rather than fleeing it, is how a person becomes a self. This is not a digital detox plan. It is not a productivity system, a creativity hack, or a mindfulness program. It is a permission book: part memoir, part attention essay, part quiet argument that ...

Can a band comprised of six very talented but very different musicians make a difference with their music? What made it possible for Diamond Rio to weather the storms inherent in the fickle world of fame and fortune and go more than two decades without a single lineup change? Any reader in...

A new collection of thirteen mesmerizing stories by American master Joyce Carol Oates, including the 2017 Pushcart Prize–winning “Undocumented Alien”. The diverse stories of Beautiful Days, Joyce Carol Oates explore the most secret, intimate, and unacknowledged interior lives of characters...

“With humor and candor, Die Hot With a Vengeance shows why beauty should be a tool of self-expression, not self-hate.” - TIME *ONE OF BUSTLE'S MOST ANTICIPATED SUMMER READS* Journalist and former Allure editor Sable Yong debuts with a sharp-toothed and hilarious essay collection about beauty...

*Named one of TIME magazine's Most Anticipated Titles of 2022* From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author and poet comes a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America's unresolved problem with race. In the midst of civil unrest in the...

The editors of Texas Monthly explore what it means to be a Texan in this anthology packed with essays, reportage, recipes, and recommendations from their renowned list of contributors. Big hats, big trucks, big oil fortunes—Texas clichés all. And while those elements do flourish throughout...

In Search of a Beautiful Freedom brings together the best work from Farah Jasmine Griffin's rich forays on music, Black feminism, literature, the crises of Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19, and the Black artists she esteems. She moves from evoking the haunting strength of Odetta and the rise of soprano popular singers in the 1970s to the forging of a Black women's literary renaissance and the politics of Malcolm X through the lens of Black feminism. 

A moving reflection on the author's father—plus a cat!—this is a beautiful short work of family history from one of our most beloved, iconic writers. Originally published in the New Yorker in 2019, and now presented in a full, unabridged form, Abandoning a Cat is a poignant, self-reflective...

Five Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas. The second annual Alchemy Lecture was presented in November 2023 at York University to a sold out in-person audience and nearly one thousand live online viewers. Moderated by Dr. Christina Sharpe, the Alchemists—agile thinkers and...

Animal expert Temple Grandin describes the benefits of the concrete thinking that accompanies her autism, in "Seeing in Beautiful, Precise Pictures," her contribution to NPR’s This I Believe series. This I Believe is a National Public Radio program that features Americans, from the famous to...

Walking Chickens in the Rain: Embracing the Chaos of Life is a wildly relatable, laugh-out-loud, heartwarming collection of essays for anyone who’s ever tried to hold it all together while everything—chickens included—ran wildly off-script. With wit, warmth, and muddy boots, Annie Rowen invites you into a life less filtered, full of flying feathers, sideways plans, and accidental wisdom. Whether she’s chasing a hen across the driveway in slippers or finding meaning in the cluck of an unimpressed bird, Annie reminds us that life doesn’t have to be tidy to be beautiful. This is not ...

Why some of the most interesting artists of our time committed themselves to some of the most devastating conflicts on Earth Why are some of the most interesting artists of our time committed to engaging with conflict and exploitation around the world? Beautiful, Gruesome, and True tells the...

Let It All Be Beautiful is a collection of 45 essays and energy practices designed to awaken the natural, authentic, and magnetic energy within all of us. Blending memoir, poetry, and lists with intentional practices, this book invites you to see yourself in your full glory. Whether you’re longing to feel more radiant, searching for healing, or motivated to become more mindful, this book will meet you where you are, celebrate everything you exude, and walk alongside you as you find your way home.

Wyl Menmuir’s The Draw of the Sea is a beautifully written and deeply moving portrait of the Cornish Coast and the people who make their livings there, examining the ephemeral but universal pull the sea holds over the human imagination. ‘A beautiful portrait of lives shaped by the swell of...

The follow-up to Hanif Kureishi’s extraordinary hospital memoir, Shattered, this is the story of what came next – a year of living at home in London after paralysis, told through scenes of carers, physio, insomnia, sex, money, football, film sets, festivals and family. The song ‘Are You...

Analyzing my own writings … i’ve realized that i was writing lots of books with love essays, but i was afraid of using the word … sex. Most probably i was not writing about it … at all … which is indeed a nonsense, cause the things are very well interconnected. Today … i look around myself … analyzing again and again … the connection between woman and man … trying to understand the meaning … studying the purpose of the connection … and realize that many of us see in that … a therapy … a way of healing ourselves. Well … analyzing more …i’ve came to the ...