Essays

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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,...

How do the bodies we inhabit affect our relationship with art? How does art affect our relationship to our bodies? T Fleischmann uses Felix Gonzales-Torres's artworks-piles of candy, stacks of paper, puzzles-as a path through questions of love and loss,...

John Berger writes: 'The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order. The people coming together are...

Ted Hughes has written a series of pieces on writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath; and on his deep-rooted concern over education, the environment and the arts.About the AuthorTed Hughes (1930-1998)...

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...

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...

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...

In Case of Loss gathers the best of Lutz Seiler's non-fiction from last twenty-five years, revealing his essays to be different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry. Seiler's beautifully anecdotal and associative pieces throw fascinating light...

'When the last fire goes out, time too will be finished'Italo Calvino was one of the most joyful and imaginative writers of the twentieth century. Here he muses on what the things we leave behind - whether waxworks or ancient graffiti, enigmatic maps or...

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...

This volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859). The edition presents De Quincey's work in all of its rich variety, and offers the most thorough...

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...

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...

'I cannot say enough about How to Read Now... Check it out' Roxane Gay'A red-hot grenade... One of my favourite books of the year' Jia Tolentino'Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny' Andrew Sean Greer'I gasped, shouted, and...

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 *...

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...

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...

Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Manhood for Amateurs and Moonglow, returns with a collection of heartfelt, humorous and insightful essays on the meaning of fatherhood. ...

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...

Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection of essays exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that made Umberto Eco one of the world's leading writers. From musings on Ptolemy and reflections on the...

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)...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781911547648Author Vivian GornickFormat PaperbackImprint Daunt BooksPublisher Daunt Books

A sparkling new translation of the classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and artThe Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects: "the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else," wrote Italo Calvino when the book first...

'Revisiting this selection of diaries and essay-reviews from the London Review of Books is restorative, an extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned.' James Wolcott in his...

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.

On foot the world comes our way. We get close to the Continent's alpine ranges, arterial rivers, expansive coastlines. Close to its ancient cities and mysterious thoroughfares; and close to the walkers themselves-the Grand Tourers and explorers,...

From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders, a lyrical book of short essays about food, offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and marvelous curiosities from natureIn Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781598536409Author Harold BloomFormat HardbackPage Count 436Imprint The Library of AmericaPublisher The Library of AmericaWeight(grams) 709gDimensions(mm)...

A Journey with Two Maps begins with an anecdote: one afternoon, Eavan Boland saw one of her mother's paintings for sale in a gallery, signed by her famous teacher. It is the starting point for an exploration of concepts of art and womanhood, of what it...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780956240163Author Carole Boyce DaviesFormat PaperbackPage Count 242Imprint Ayebia Clarke Publishing LtdPublisher Ayebia Clarke Publishing LtdWeight(grams)...