Essays

The lives of people both famous and obscure are filled with moments when their dirty laundry sees daylight. At such times we witness the reversibility of success, of prominence, but also come to terms viscerally with our own most vulnerable selves. We...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched...

In this debut collection of essays, lists, musings, and quips, Zimmerman delicately walks the fine line between tear-jerking and knee-slapping, and does so with aplomb. Through this memoir-esque exploration of selfhood, Zach unveils the pros and cons of...

David Gallop provides a Greek text and a new facing-page translation of the extant fragments of Parmenides' philosophical poem. He also includes the first complete translation into English of the contexts in which the fragments have been transmitted to...

George Orwell's essay examines the power of language to shape political ideas. It is about the importance of writing concisely, clearly and precisely and the dangers to our ability to think when language, especially political language, is obscured by...

Ernest Hemingway's literary apprenticeship was served in journalism, a career that he pursued for over four decades. From his early work as a correspondent for the Toronto Star in Europe during the 1920s, through his inimitable articles for Esquire and...

In the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne explores the temptations of the French capital in a teasing study of foreign mores and Restif de la Bretonne provides an eye-witness account of the Revolution. From the 1800s, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola...

Holography, wax museums, the secret meaning of spectator sports, Superman and the intellectual effects of over-tight jeans are just a few of the subjects covered in this collection of witty, entertaining and thought-provoking delights from Umberto Eco,...

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William Morris is perhaps best known today for the beautiful textile designs he created under the banner of Morris & Co, which continue to decorate homes around the globe. As one of the leading lights of British socialism, however, he is less well known,...

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Mike Royko wrote a daily column for nearly 35 years - at first for the "Chicago Daily News", then the "Sun-Times", and finally the "Tribune" - and his Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary was syndicated in more than 600 newspapers nationwide. Pretension and...

The poet in exile.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 emperor...

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Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780814255193Author David ShieldsFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint Ohio State University PressPublisher Ohio State University PressWeight(grams)...

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was a major cultural figure in post-WWII Italy, well-known as a poet, novelist, communist intellectual, and filmmaker. In Danger is the first anthology in English devoted to his political and literary essays, with a...

Martha Gellhorn's peacetime dispatches bear witness to six decades of change: America in the Great Depression, the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, young Poles undaunted by their Communist government, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Spain in the days after...

A milestone in feminist literature, this marvelous European romance, narrated by a woman, is considered the first psychological novel in a modern language and a precursor of stream-of-consciousness fiction. Written by Giovanni Boccaccio between 1343 and...

Tourists, terrorists, secularists, hackers, fundamentalists, transhumanists, algorithmicians: in this book Roberto Calasso considers the tribes that inhabit and inform the world today. A world that feels more elusive than ever before.This book, the ninth...

"Beauchemin discovers again and again that happiness is a function of the connection between beings-the nonhuman animals as well as the human."-Maria Popova, A Favorite Book of 2023For readers of Ross Gay's The Book of Delights comes a joyful, tender...

The bestselling author of Find Me and Call Me by Your Name returns to the essay form with this collection of thoughts on time, the creative mind, and great lives and works. The irrealis mood knows no boundaries between what is and what isn't, between...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780307388681Author Gore VidalFormat PaperbackPage Count 480Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 391gDimensions(mm) 203mm * 132mm...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780995467170Author Johanna HarrisonFormat PaperbackPage Count 138Imprint Peripeteia PressPublisher Peripeteia PressWeight(grams) 204gDimensions(mm) 234mm *...

A writer for whom the journey has always mattered reinvents the very form itself in this inviting collection of in-the-moment impressions of his journeys A writer of enormous erudition and wide-ranging travels, Claudio Magris selects for this volume...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780804138161Author Mindy KalingFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Crown Publishing Group (NY)Publisher Crown Publishing Group (NY)Weight(grams)...

This anthology of medieval writing provides a context for a deeper understanding of the Gawain-poet's originality and skill. The intertextuality of this brilliant poem can be more fully understood through Elisabeth Brewer's presentation of modern...

A beautiful and elegant collection, with gorgeous full-color art reproductions, Looking at Pictures presents a little-known side of the eccentric Swiss genius: his great writings on art. His essays consider Van Gogh, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Cranach, Watteau,...

Ursula K. Le Guin has won or been nominated for over 200 awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master Awards. She is the acclaimed author of the Earthsea sequence and The Left Hand of Darkness - which alone...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780998267586Author Mayrocker FriederikeFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint A Public SpacePublisher A Public Space

A collection of John Carey's greatest, wisest, and wittiest reviews-amassed over a lifetime of writing In 1977, newly installed as a professor of English at Oxford, John Carey took the position of chief reviewer for the Sunday Times. In a career...

A group of notable writers-including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, Margaret MacMillan, and Jenny Uglow-celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past What can a...

Art honours the world, and criticism honours art, even - perhaps especially - when the critic sets out to destroy. The bad review is hardly ever written out of mere spite. In most cases, the motivation is disappointed idealism. Critics are people who...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781617757662Author Ian F SvenoniusFormat PaperbackPage Count 270Imprint Akashic Books,U.S.Publisher Akashic Books,U.S.

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780812975093Author Lawrence BuellFormat PaperbackPage Count 608Imprint Modern Library IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 408gDimensions(mm)...

Antiquity's satirist supreme.Lucian (ca. AD 120-190), the satirist from Samosata on the Euphrates, started as an apprentice sculptor, turned to rhetoric and visited Italy and Gaul as a successful traveling lecturer before settling in Athens and ...

From the fierce and funny Clive James, this is Britain in the twenty-first century - from wheelie bins to plastic surgery, and from Britain's Got Talent to contemporary art.Between 2007 and 2009, Clive James wrote and presented A Point of View for BBC...

A selection of witty and provocative essays from the father of New Journalism, Gay Talese's Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and Other Essays is published in Penguin Modern Classics.Gay Talese is the father of American New Journalism, who transformed traditional...

Annie Dillard has spent a lifetime examining the world around her with eyes wide open, drinking in all things intensely and relentlessly. Whether observing a sublime lunar eclipse or a moth consumed in a candle flame, the trembling of lily pads on a pond...

*A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021*From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Mars Room, a career-spanning collection of spectacular essays about politics and culture.Rachel Kushner is a writer celebrated for her 'chops, ambition, and killer instinct'...

In 'The Decay of Lying' Oscar Wilde uses his decadent ideology in an attempt to reverse and therefore reject his audiences' 'normal' conceptualizations of nature, art and morality. Wilde's views of life and art are illustrated through the use of Platonic...