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High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never
By Barbara Kingsolver. 1984
"There is no one quite like Barbara Kingsolver in contemporary literature," raves the Washington Post Book World, and it is…
right. She has been nominated three times for the ABBY award, and her critically acclaimed writings consistently enjoy spectacular commercial success as they entertain and touch her legions of loyal fans. In High Tide in Tucson, she returns to her familiar themes of family, community, the common good and the natural world. The title essay considers Buster, a hermit crab that accidentally stows away on Kingsolver's return trip from the Bahamas to her desert home, and turns out to have manic-depressive tendencies. Buster is running around for all he's worth -- one can only presume it's high tide in Tucson. Kingsolver brings a moral vision and refreshing sense of humor to subjects ranging from modern motherhood to the history of private property to the suspended citizenship of human beings in the Animal Kingdom. Beautifully packaged, with original illustrations by well-known illustrator Paul Mirocha, these wise lessons on the urgent business of being alive make it a perfect gift for Kingsolver's many fans.Fever Swamp: My Journey Through The Strange Neverland Of The 2016 Presidential Race
By Richard North Patterson. 2016
By fall 2015, the rise of Donald Trump as the likely Republican nominee confirmed that, for better or worse, Americans…
had been transported to a strange new land populated by mysterious creatures, where the normal laws of the political universe no longer applied. Fascinated, amused, and appalled, bestselling novelist Richard North Patterson accepted an invitation to write one column per week for the Huffington Post about the presidential race. Those essays are collected here for the first time in a highly personal "journal" chronicling Patterson's observations in real time.Before long, thousands of Americans were reading Patterson's weekly descriptions of the campaign, a gauntlet without rules in which the projected psyches of the candidates reflected--and stirred--the roiling emotions of a substantially disgruntled electorate. Smart, prescient, funny, and deeply informed by extensive background research, these pieces form a narrative that captures the race as it occurred--the bald-faced lies, the painful truths, the pivotal issues, and the astonishing personalities that made the election of 2016 utterly unpredictable and uniquely consequential. Best of all, in marginalia scattered throughout the book Patterson looks back to see where he was right, where he was wrong, and where events were so beyond human experience that no one could have predicted them.In this bracing, funny book, Patterson brings to bear a novelist's piercing sensibility to the process of examining the election, moments that betray a candidate's character and inner life and hold up a mirror to the American population. Filled with fresh insights and indelible prose, Fever Swamp is a masterful take on a unique campaign filled with the pathos, humor, and important lessons of the liveliest playground shoving match.How Does That Make You Feel?: True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch
By Sherry Amatenstein. 2016
How Does That Make You Feel? obliterates the boundaries between the shrink and the one being shrunk with unabashedly candid…
writers breaking confidentiality and telling all about their experiences in therapy. This revelatory, no-punches-pulled book brings to light both sides of the "relationship” between therapist and client-a bond that can feel pure and profound, even if it is, at times, illusory. Contributors include an array of essayists, authors, TV/film writers and therapists, including Patti Davis, Beverly Donofrio, Royal Young, Molly Peacock, Susan Shapiro, Charlie Rubin, Estelle Erasmus, and Dennis Palumbo. Full list of contributors: Sherry Amatenstein Laura Bogart Martha Crawford Patti Davis Megan Devine Beverly Donofrio Janice Eidus Estelle Erasmus Juli Fraga Nina Gaby Mindy Greenstein Jenine Holmes Diane Josefowicz Jean Kim Amy Klein Binnie Klein Anna March Allison McCarthy Kurt Nemes Dennis Palumbo Molly Peacock Pamela Rafalow Grossman Charlie Rubin Jonathan Schiff Barbara Schoichet Adam Sexton Susan Shapiro Beth Sloan Eve Tate Kate Walter Priscilla Warner Linda Yellin Royal Young Jessica ZuckerThis Is the Place: Women Writing About Home
By Margot Kahn. 2017
Home is a loaded word, a complex idea: it's a place that can be comforting, difficult, nourishing, war-torn, or political.…
In this breathtaking, thought-provoking collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more. Contributors--including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer Finney Boylan--lend a diverse range of voices to this subject that remains at the core of our national conversations. What makes a home? What do equality, safety, and politics have to do with it? And why is it so important to us to feel like we belong? Engaging, insightful, and full of hope, This is the Place will make you laugh, cry, and think hard about home, wherever you may find it.He was an ordained minister, renowned orator, and beloved author and poet whose ideas on nature, philosophy, and religion influenced…
authors such as Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. Through his writings, Emerson ardently professed the importance of being an individual, resisting the comfort of conformity, and creating an art of living in harmony with nature. This soul-satisfying anthology of twelve favorite essays is a treasure.In the title essay, Emerson writes about the extraordinary power of nature as a way of bringing the divine into our lives. In "Gifts," he reminds us that flowers and gold may be acceptable to those we love, but "the only gift is a portion of thyself." "Spiritual Laws" points out that because a higher law than our own rules the world, there is no need for struggle. Other essays include "Character," "Prudence," "Intellect," "Love," "Beauty," "The American Scholar" address and others. Readers of all ages will want to keep this volume on hand to inspire and refresh the spiritSome of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays
By June Jordan. 2002
"She remains a thinker and activist who 'insists upon complexity. ' "Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle*Some of Us Did Not…
Die brings together a rich sampling of the late poet June Jordan's prose writings. The essays in this collection, which include her last writings and span the length of her extraordinary career, reveal Jordan as an incisive analyst of the personal and public costs of remaining committed to the ideal and practice of democracy. Willing to venture into the most painful contradictions of American culture and politics, Jordan comes back with lyrical honesty, wit, and wide-ranging intelligence in these accounts of her reckoning with life as a teacher, poet, activist, and citizen.Stretching my Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee
By Edward Albee. 2005
AmericaOCOs most important living playwright, Edward Albee, has been rocking our countryOCOs moral, political and artistic complacency for more than…
50 years. Beginning with his debut play, "The Zoo Story (1958), " and on to his barrier breaking works of the 1960s, most notably "The American Dream (1960), WhoOCOs Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Delicate Balance (1966), " AlbeeOCOs provocative, unsparing indictment of the American way of life earned him early distinction as the dramatist of his generation. His acclaim was enhanced even further in the decades that followed with prize-winning dramas such as "Seascape" and "Three Tall Women, " as well as recent works like "The Play About the Baby " and "Who is Sylvia?" Albee has brought the same critical force to his non-theatrical prose. "Stretching My Mind" collects for the first time ever the author's writings on theater, literature, and the political and cultural battlegrounds that have defined his career. Many of the selections were drawn from Albee's private papers, and almost all previously published material?dating from 1960 to the present?has never been reprinted. Topics include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Sam Shepherd, as well as autobiographical writings about Albee's life, work, and worldview. "Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination
By Lee Siegel. 2006
Sex and the City, Saul Bellow, Eyes Wide Shut, Dante and the American self, Barbara Kingsolver, acting in Hollywood, Soviet…
painting in Soho, Angels in America, Jane Austen in the present, J. K. Rowling--nothing escapes Lee Siegel's incandescent eye. Siegel possesses an intellectual range and independent perspective unmatched by his peers, and Falling Upwards brings together the best of his essays, all of them rich with the trades mark wit and intelligence that have won him many friends and a few enemies. In these essential writings, Siegel deftly uses the occasion of a book, film, painting, or television show not merely to appraise it, but to make sense of life in a way that is more defiant of impoverished cultural "norms" than most contemporary artistic expression. Guided by the belief that a calculating self-interest in art-making diminishes the prospects for the imagination in life, Siegel celebrates authentic sensibilities and lambasts manufactured sentiments. With uncanny insight, yet also with incomparable logic and analytical rigor, he has invented a new idiom in which the language of criticism embodies the playful, creative, synthesizing power that has been largely abdicated by the arts in our time. In writing about works of culture, Siegel has created a standard by which to judge them.Between the Covers: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures
By Ellen Heltzel, Margo Hammond. 2008
With wit and wisdom, the bibliophile's Ebert & Roeper recommend more than 600 books based on what women care about…
most. Between the Covers is organized around their wide-ranging curiosity-about themselves, friends and family, the larger world-and their concerns, from health to sex to managing their finances. With such sections as "Babes We Love" (Role Models Real and Imagined), "The Babe Inside" (Focusing on Body and Soul), and "Love, Sex & Second Chances," this unique collection of fiction and nonfiction reflects how women really read.Reputation: Portraits in Power
By Majorie Wiliiams. 2008
Best Music Writing 2008
By Nelson George, Daphne Carr. 2008
Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflection
By Ishmael Reed. 2008
Best Food Writing 2017
By Holly Hughes. 2017
From small-town bakeries to big city restaurants, Best Food Writing offers a bounty of everything in one place. For eighteen…
years, Holly Hughes has scoured both the online and print world to serve up the finest collection of food writing. This year, Best food Writing delves into the intersection of fine dining and food justice, culture and ownership, tradition and modernity; as well as profiles on some of the most fascinating people in the culinary world today. Once again, these standout essays--compelling, hilarious, poignant, illuminating--speak to the core of our hearts and fill our bellies. Whether you're a fan of Michel Richard or Guy Fieri--or both--there's something for everyone here. Take a seat and dig in.Food and Drink: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions: Speeches/quotations Ser.)
By Susan L. Rattiner. 1998
This entertaining little book contains scores of thoughts, opinions, witticisms, and insights on two of the necessities -- and greatest…
pleasures -- of life. Included are humorous comments by Samuel Johnson ("A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.") and Henny Youngman ("My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle."); incisive remarks by George Bernard Shaw ("Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.") and Mark Twain ("Eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."); along with hilarious and frequently thoughtful advice from Robert Morley, G. K. Chesterton, W. C. Fields, Julia Child, Andy Rooney, Marilyn Monroe, Elsa Schiaparelli, and a host of other writers, humorists, and celebrities. Arranged according to subject (alcohol, cheese, cooking, fruits and vegetables, diet, hunger, etc.), this delightful collection will be welcomed by public speakers, speech writers, and general readers.Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book
By Sean Manning. 2010
Lovers of the printed book, arise! Thirty of today's top writers are here to tell you you're not alone. InBound…
to Last,an amazing array of authors comes to the passionate defense of the printed book with spirited,never-before-published essays celebrating the hardcover or paperback they hold most dear--not necessarily because of its contents, but because of its significance as a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceableobject. Whether focusing on the circumstances behind how a particular book was acquired, or how it has become forever "bound up" with a specific person, time, or place, each piece collected here confirms--poignantly, delightfully, irrefutably--that every book tells a story far beyond the one found within its pages. In addition to a foreword by Ray Bradbury,Bound to Lastfeatures original contributions by: Chris Abani, Rabih Alameddine, Anthony Doerr, Louis Ferrante, Nick Flynn, Karen Joy Fowler, Julia Glass, Karen Green, David Hajdu, Terrence Holt, Jim Knipfel, Shahriar Mandanipour, Sarah Manguso, Sean Manning, Joyce Maynard, Philipp Meyer, Jonathan Miles, Sigrid Nunez, Ed Park, Victoria Patterson, Francine Prose, Michael Ruhlman, Elissa Schappell, Christine Schutt, Jim Shepard, Susan Straight, J. Courtney Sullivan, Anthony Swofford, Danielle Trussoni, and Xu XiaobinBest Music Writing 2010
By Ann Powers, Daphne Carr. 2010
Best Music Writing has become one of the most eagerly awaited annuals out there. Celebrating the year in music writing…
by gathering a rich array of essays, missives, and musings on every style of music from rock to hip-hop to R&B to jazz to pop to blues and more, it is essential reading for anyone who loves great music and accomplished writing. Scribes of every imaginable sort-novelists, poets, journalists, musicians-are gathered to create a multi-voiced snapshot of the year in music writing that, like the music it illuminates, is every bit as thrilling as it is riveting.All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers
By Alana Massey. 2017
"Alana Massey's prose is to brutal honesty what a mandolin is to a butter knife: she's sharper; she slices thinner;…
she shows the cross-section of a truth so deftly--so powerfully and cannily--it's hard to look away, and hard not to feel that something has shifted in you for having read her."--Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy ExamsFrom columnist and critic Alana Massey, a collection of essays examining the intersection of the personal with pop culture through the lives of pivotal female figures--from Sylvia Plath to Britney Spears--in the spirit of Chuck Klosterman, with the heart of a true fan. Mixing Didion's affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, ALL THE LIVES I WANT is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard. But it is, above all, a paean to the celebrities who have shaped a generation of women--from Scarlett Johansson to Amber Rose, Lil' Kim, Anjelica Huston, Lana Del Rey, Anna Nicole Smith and many more. These reflections aim to reimagine these women's legacies, and in the process, teach us new ways of forgiving ourselves.The Rub of Time: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017
By Martin Amis. 2019
The definitive collection of essays and reportage written during the past thirty years from one of most provocative and widely…
read writers--with new commentary by the author.For more than thirty years, Martin Amis has turned his keen intellect and unrivaled prose loose on an astonishing range of topics--politics, sports, celebrity, America, and, of course, literature. Now, at last, these incomparable essays have been gathered together. Here is Amis at the 2011 GOP Iowa Caucus, where, squeezed between "windbreakers and woolly hats," he pores over The Ron Paul Family Cookbook and laments the absence of "our Banquo," Herman Cain. He writes about finally confronting the effects of aging on his athletic prowess. He revisits, time and time again, the worlds of Bellow and Nabokov, his "twin peaks," masters who have obsessed and inspired him. Brilliant, incisive, and savagely funny, The Rub of Time is a vital addition to any Amis fan's bookshelf, and the perfect primer for readers discovering his fierce and tremendous talents for the first time.On Tennis: Five Essays
By David Foster Wallace. 2014
David Foster Wallace's extraordinary writing on tennis, collected for the first time in an exclusive digital-original edition. A "long-time rabid…
fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. ON TENNIS presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time. This lively and entertaining collection begins with Wallace's own experience as a prodigious tennis player ("Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"). He also challenges the sports memoir genre ("How Tracy Austen Broke My Heart"), takes us to the US Open ("Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open"), and profiles of two of the world's greatest tennis players ("Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" and "Federer Both Flesh and Not"). With infectious enthusiasm and enormous heart, Wallace's writing shows us the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of the game he loved best.Both Flesh and Not: Essays
By David Foster Wallace. 2012
Brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction writings by "aone of the most influential writers of his generation" (New York Times). David Foster…
Wallace was beloved for his inimitable voice and wit-and, for many of his readers, admired as much for his astonishingly perceptive and inventive essays as he was for his fiction. Both Flesh and Not gathers fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time.Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more.In addition to these essays, Both Flesh and Not includes a selection from Wallace's personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions that serve as a reminder of Wallace's ferocious love of language. A sweeping, exhilarating collection of some of the author's most emotionally immediate work, Both Flesh and Not reminds us why A.O. Scott, writing in the New York Times, called David Foster Wallace "The best mind of his generation."