Essays Social

Among the men and women prominent in the public life of early 20th-century America there are but few whose names are mentioned as often as that of Emma Goldman. Yet the real Emma Goldman is almost quite unknown. Here are powerful, penetrating, prophetic essays on direct action, the role of minorities, prison reform, puritan hypocrisy, and violence.

Bar candidates are required to memorize massive quantities of law, frequently written by some of the the world's best authors—the justices of the United States Supreme Court. Mining the rule of law from complex decisions is no easy feat. Enter this audiobook, a concise, all-encompassing reference to the rules required for passing the bar exam. Sorted by essay topic, this book balances the listing all required elements and keeping it simple, with one goal in mind—compiling all of the necessary rules in a format that is easy to understand, easy to remember, and easy to recall.

The text that inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and movements of peaceful resistance around the world—now in a new accessible edition with introduction and notes by Henry Bugalho. In 1849, Henry David Thoreau published one of the most influential essays in the history of political thought. Jailed for refusing to pay taxes that would finance the war against Mexico and the maintenance of slavery, Thoreau transformed his night in prison into a devastating reflection on the limits of obedience to the State. When the law is unjust, to obey is to collaborate with injustice. Civil ...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER by the author of All About Love! “When truth teller and careful writer bell hooks offers a book, I like to be standing at the bookshop when it opens.” –Maya Angelou Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every woman to courageously claim the...

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through the eastern United States. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America.

The final and most personal work from Pulitzer Prize - winning author and historian Will Durant - discovered 32 years after his death - is a message of insight for everyone who has sought meaning in life or the council of a wise friend in navigating life's journey. From 1968 to 1978, Will Durant made four public allusions to the existence of Fallen Leaves. One, in 1975, hinted at its contents: "a not very serious book that answers the questions of what I think about government, life, death, and God."

Australia has forgotten what keeps it safe. So argues Michael Wesley in this sharp and compelling essay about our place in the world. Southeast Asia is the key to our national security and prosperity. If China dominates the region, as it plans to, Australia will be very vulnerable. So why are we following an American strategy that isolates and alienates us from our neighbours? Wesley argues that the focus on AUKUS and sticking with Trump is a dangerous distraction. Whereas the United States has little at stake in Southeast Asia, Australia has everything to lose.

“Genius ... It is miraculous to read these pieces ... You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned...

There is so much to write about the French. Because they invented cinemas, bicycles, cars, photography, radioactivity, but also the bra, the croque-monsieur, the garbage can, and dentures. Because the French express themselves in a language qualified as one of the sexiest, albeit with sounds so often considered animalistic: coucou, quoi, oui…. Because in France, we intrinsically like to rebel against everything: system, government, our employer, and we go so far as to go on strike preventively against a law that does not yet exist. A country where artists transform urinals into works of ...

What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on, invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever-expanding freedom.

Through studious research into past civilizations, Burnham diagnoses the 20th century and finds it afflicted with destructive, even "suicidal" tendencies - all of which arise from the “Liberal syndrome” and its inherent applications. The book explores several important questions, including why Liberalism clashes with Christianity and how Liberalism is a root cause of race riots and the rapid growth in crime.

William Gibson is known primarily as a novelist, with his work ranging from his groundbreaking first novel, Neuromancer, to his more recent contemporary best sellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. During those nearly 30 years, though, Gibson has been sought out by widely varying publications for his insights into contemporary culture.

In the years between her first public lecture in 1961 and her last in 1981, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces are gathered together in book form for the first time. Written in the last decades of Rand's life, they reflect a life lived on principle, a probing mind, and a passionate intensity. With them are five essays by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's longtime associate and literary executor.

In the 1960s and early '70s, the most prominent, vocal cultural movement was the New Left: a movement that condemned America and everything it stood for: individualism, material wealth, science, technology, capitalism.

In this stunningly personal document, James Baldwin remembers in vivid details the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness and the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

In this autobiography, woven from personal pieces composed over the course of a celebrated writing life of more than 50 years, you'll meet William Buckley the boy, growing up in a family of 10 children; Buckley the daring young political enfant terrible, whose debut book, God and Man at Yale, was a shocking New York Times best seller; Buckley the editor of National Review, widely hailed as the founder of the modern conservative movement; and Buckley the husband and father.

In this definitive collection of essays, including the poignant title essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson expounds on the importance of trusting your soul, as well as divine providence, to carve out a life. A firm believer in nonconformity, Emerson celebrates the individual and stresses the value of listening to the inner voice unique to each of us—even when it defies society's expectations.

A seminal work of scientific and philosophical exploration. Ever since the Greeks coined the language we commonly use for scientific description, mythology and science have developed separately. But what if we could prove that all myths have one common origin in a celestial cosmology? What if the gods, the places they lived, and what they did are but ciphers for celestial activity, a language for the perpetuation of complex astronomical data?

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

From "the best essayist in this country” (The New York Times Book Review) comes an incisive book-length essay about racism in American movies that challenges the underlying assumptions in many of the films that have shaped our consciousness.