Essays

Blending intellectual speculation with anecdote and personal reflection, the Renaissance thinker and writer Montaigne pioneered the modern essay. This selection contains his idiosyncratic and timeless writings on subjects as varied as the virtues of...

More than any other writer Gilbert White (1720-93) has shaped the relationship between man and nature. A hundred years before Darwin, White realised the crucial role of worms in the formation of soil and understood the significance of territory and song...

'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' - Guardian Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV...

**NOW INCLUDING THE FIRST CHAPTER OF DEMON COPPERHEAD**TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONTHE MULTI-MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHORWith the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Barbara...

Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony...

Three postconsular speeches.Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106-43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of ...

Atomic atheism in verse. Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) lived ca. 99-ca. 55 BC, but the details of his career are unknown. He is the author of the great didactic poem in hexameters, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). In six books compounded of...

"Renee Gladman has always struck me as being a dreamer--she writes that way and the dreaming seems to construct the architecture of the world unfolding before our reading eyes." --Eileen Myles A collection of linked essays concerned with the life and...

'Dazzling ... in her kaleidoscopic essays, memoir has been shattered into sliding and overlapping pieces ... mind-expanding' The New York Times Book Review Esme Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the...

In September 1939, housewife and mother Nella Last began a diary whose entries, in their regularity, length and quality, have created a record of the Second World War which is powerful, fascinating and unique. When war broke out, Nella's younger son...

TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016'Gray must be one of the best read of contemporary philosophers, trawling insouciantly through high-, middle- and low-brow literature with the sharp-eyed eclecticism of a magpie of genius' John Banville, Guardian'Like Isaiah...

'China's first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers' Pankaj Mishra'A country does not become corrupt and...

For centuries, cats have been worshipped, adored and mistrusted in equal measure. This beautiful gift book contains a selection of essays, stories, and poems on cats by writers from across the ages. In these pages, writers reflect on the curious...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wow, No Thank You'Brilliant, hilarious and perspicacious.' ELIZABETH DAY'One of our culture's greatest humorists is back.' Glamour'SO funny.' SARA PASCOEThis is not an advice book. Samantha Irby doesn't...

In this eagerly awaited follow-up to his international bestsellers Anam Cara and Eternal Echoes, John O'Donohue turns his attention to the subject of beauty - the divine beauty that calls the imagination and awakens all that is noble in the human heart...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781423652694Author Ralph Waldo EmersonFormat HardbackPage Count 320Imprint Gibbs M. Smith IncPublisher Gibbs M. Smith Inc

Annie Ernaux's father died exactly two months after she passed her exams for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labour, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little...

Complete collection of Tolkien's essays, including two on Beowulf, which span three decades beginning six years before The Hobbit to five years after The Lord of the Rings. The seven 'essays' by J.R.R. Tolkien assembled in this new paperback...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.About the AuthorRalph J. Gleason (1917-1975) was cofounder of Rolling Stone magazine and the author of numerous articles and three highly regarded books on music and musicians...

A unique look at the craft of writing from a bestselling master of storytelling. The perfect gift for all book lovers.In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author shares with readers what he thinks about being a novelist; his thoughts...

Described as the Tony Hancock of journalism, for forty years Bernard wrote only about himself and the failures of his life - with women, drink, doctors, horses - which have become legendary. Low Life is an irresistible collection of the best of...

Visionary English Socialist and pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris argued that all work should be a source of pride and satisfaction, and that everyone should be entitled to beautiful surroundings - no matter what their class...

Though best known in the English speaking world for his short fictions and poems, Borges is revered in Latin America equally as an immensely prolific and beguiling writer of non-fiction prose. In THE TOTAL LIBRARY, more than 150 of Borges' most...

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded itJune 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising - the most...

In Only a Voice, George Scialabba examines the chasm between modernity's promise of progress and the sobering reality of our present day through studies of the most influential public intellectuals of our time. In Scialabba's hands, literary criticism...

C. S. Lewis' Little Book of Wisdom offers more than 300 bite-size nuggets of inspiration and wisdom from the much-loved author, philosopher, and Christian theologist. Novelist, poet, critic, scholar, Christian theologist, and best-selling...

The former Sex & Relationships Editor for Cosmopolitan and host of the wildly popular comedy show Tinder Live with Lane Moore presents her poignant, funny, and deeply moving first book.Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive onstage-whether...

A profound essay collection from the beloved author of Gilead, Houskeeping and Lila, including Marilynne Robinson's conversation with President Barack Obama. 'Grace and intelligence ...[her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human'...

George Orwell set out 'to make political writing into an art', and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature - his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780140446890Author Christine de PizanFormat PaperbackPage Count 336Imprint Penguin ClassicsPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 249gDimensions(mm)...

'Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life'The two works brought together here, 'The Decay of Lying' and 'The Critic as Artist', are Oscar Wilde's wittiest and most profound writings on aesthetics, in which he proposes that criticism is the...

In this bold, fascinating book, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear - fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in your children's air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines. Reflecting on her own experience as a...

Anglo-English Attitudes brings together Geoff Dyer's best journalism and other writing from 1984-99. There are studied meditations on photographers (Robert Capa, William Gedney, Cartier-Bresson), painters (Bonnard, Gauguin), musicians (Coltrane, Nusrat...

For ten years Louis Theroux has been making programmes about off-beat characters on the fringes of US society. Now he revisits America and the people who have most fascinated him to try to discover what motivates them, why they believe the things they...

A collection of essays in which the author writes of her own upbringing, her human and literary antecedents, and also dwells on lives and poems. The book includes writings on T.S. Eliot, George Oppen, Sylvia Plath, Robinson Jeffers, Wallace Stevens, and...

A devastating essay on loss and the people we love from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can...

In the twenty-one poems of the Heroides, Ovid gave voice to the heroines and heroes of epic and myth. These deeply moving literary epistles reveal the happiness and torment of love, as the writers tell of their pain at separation, forgiveness of...

Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of...

As well as the nine essays on his country's psyche and history that make up 'The Labyrinth of Solitude', this highly acclaimed volume also includes 'The Other Mexico', Paz's heartfelt response to the government massacre of over three hundred students in...

'Magical' MINDY KALING'Funny and poignant and beautiful' JOHN MULANEY 'It made me remember I was alive' GEORGE SAUNDERS To see the world through Jenny Slate's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As...