Essays

The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, and reportage from around the world. Its aim, to break down barriers and introduce the essence of the place. Packed with essays and investigative journalism; original photography and...

'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan'Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin' Observer'I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather,...

'Profoundly engaging in depth, with remarkable subtlety and rare, limpid beauty. A must-read' - Mary GaitskillA luminous memoir about reading, writing and how to find meaning in a lifeWritten over two years while the author battled depression, Dear...

By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race The late Anthony...

"A fine example of everyone's favourite genre: the genre-defying book, inspired by history, filtered through imagination and finished with a jeweller's eye for detail" JOHN SELF, Guardian"As we deal with the consequences, emotional and material, of a...

One of the most important politics books of the year, To Obama is a record of a time when politics intersected with empathy. 'The real story of Obama's America' Sunday Times Every day, President Obama received ten thousand letters from ordinary...

Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a...

A rich feast of travel writing, literary essays and fascinating interviews from Sunday Times bestselling travel author Paul Theroux'Wonderful... Evidence of both the breadth of Theroux's interests and his skill in bringing them to life' Sunday Times...

'The term culture ... includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people; Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into...

'A rich, deep moral view of fiction and life: the lessons from this book were essential to my development as an artist.' Brandon TaylorAt her death in 1964, O'Connor left behind a body of unpublished essays and lectures as well as a number of critical...

'How is the mind agitated and bewildered, at being thus, as it were, placed on the borders of a new world!' - William Bartram 'Thus you see, dear sister, the manners of mankind do not differ so widely as our voyage writers would have us believe.' -...

"Mark Musa, in editing and translating Petrarch's Canzoniere, has performed a wonderful service to the English-speaking reader. Here, in one volume, are included the poet's own selection of the best lyric verse he wrote throughout his life, accompanied...

'People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...'In this provocative and blackly funny essay, Thomas de Quincey considers murder in a...

On the march to greatness.Arrian (Flavius Arrianus), of the period ca. AD 95-175, was a Greek historian and philosopher of Nicomedia in Bithynia. Both a Roman and an Athenian citizen, he was governor of the Roman province of Cappadocia 132-137, and...

Travelling on horseback through southern England in the early 19th century, William Cobbett provides evocative and accurate descriptions of the countryside, colourful accounts of his encounters with labourers, and indignant outbursts at the encroaching...

Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In...

Selections from Leopardi's prose masterwork, Zibaldone, one of the great intellectual diaries in European literature, expertly translated by Tim ParksRevenge-Revenge is so sweet one often wishes to be insulted so as to be able to take revenge, and I...

Learned love poems from the early Augustan age.The passionate and dramatic elegies of Propertius gained him a reputation as one of Rome's finest love poets. Here he portrays the exciting, uneven course of his love affair with Cynthia and tells us much...

This selection of John Donne's most powerful prose shows that the man remembered predominantly for his poetry was also a preacher, and a prose writer of extraordinary power. In it, he explores the metaphysical collision between poetry and religion,...

AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4'S BETWEEN OURSELVES, IN CONVERSATION WITH TARA FLYNNLaugh your socks off with this hilarious collection of tales, observations and flights of fancy from the No. 1 bestselling author of Grown Ups'Will make you laugh, cry and feel...

In Lovebug, Daisy Lafarge explores metaphors of love and disease as she seeks to understand human vulnerability and our intimacy with microbial life. Turning to microbiology, mysticism, and psychoanalysis - as well as the raw materials of love and...

'I can promise to be candid, not, however, to be impartial.'A selection of the most insightful maxims and reflections from one of Germany's greatest ever thinkers.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black...

Orwell demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic and philosophical commentary. As a critic, George Orwell cast a wide net. Equally at home discussing Charles Dickens and Charlie...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780307264879Author Joan DidionFormat HardbackPage Count 1160Imprint Random House IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 987gDimensions(mm) 210mm *...

First and foremost an outcry against injustice and inhumanity, Unto this Last is also a closely argued assault on the science of political economy, which dominated the Victorian period. Ruskin was a profoundly conservative man who looked back to the...

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf? ...

Syncretistic exegesis.The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish ...

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short formWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEANETTE WINTERSON'What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?' Security, confidence, independence, a degree of prosperity - a room of one's own. All things...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143105732Author Jorge Luis BorgesFormat PaperbackPage Count 192Imprint Penguin ClassicsPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 153gDimensions(mm) 197mm...

The Best American Magazine Writing 2023 offers a selection of outstanding journalism on timely topics, including inequalities and injustices pressuring families, especially mothers. Rozina Ali tells the story of a U.S. marine who unlawfully adopted an...

In these inspiring essays about why we read, Proust explores all the pleasures and trials that we take from books, as well as explaining the beauty of Ruskin and his work, and the joys of losing yourself in literature as a child. Throughout history, some...

Everybody knows a Chauvo-Feminist... The 2017 #MeToo movement was a flagship moment, a time which empowered women to share their stories of sexual harassment and abuse in a spirit of solidarity and in demand of change. But have some men simply changed...

The poetry of change.Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC-AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the...

In over 30 essays, written over 20 years, one of the world's great story-tellers meditates on story-telling. Warm, funny, generous, entertaining and, above all, deeply considered, they offer thoughts on a wide variety of topics, including the origin...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of Literary Award (Art of the Essay) 2000.Book InformationISBN 9780375703478Author Annie DillardFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random...

Volume two of Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory's powerful and elegaic version of the Arthurian legend, recounts the adventures of Sir Tristram de Liones and the treachery of Sir Mordred, and follows Sir Launcelot's quest for The Holy Grail, his...

"Every line we succeed in publishing today...is a victory wrested from the powers of darkness." So wrote Walter Benjamin in January 1940. Not long afterward, he himself would fall prey to those powers, a victim of suicide following a failed attempt to...

One November morning, Tom Jeffreys set off from Euston Station with a gnarled old walking stick in his hand and an overloaded rucksack. His aim was to walk the 119 miles from London to Birmingham along the proposed route of HS2. Needless to say, he...

'Shooting an Elephant' is Orwell's searing and painfully honest account of his experience as a police officer in imperial Burma; killing an escaped elephant in front of a crowd 'solely to avoid looking a fool'. The other masterly essays in this...

Classic criticism.This volume brings together the three most influential ancient Greek treatises on literature.Aristotle's Poetics contains his treatment of Greek tragedy: its history, nature, and conventions, with details on poetic diction. Stephen...