Showing titles in Essays

Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark.

In 2018, boundary-breaking visual and sonic artist Cosey Fanni Tutti received a commission to write the soundtrack to a film about Delia Derbyshire, the pioneering electronic composer who influenced the likes of Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers. While researching Derbyshire's life, Tutti became immersed in her story and uncovered fascinating parallels with her own life. At the same time, Tutti began reading about Margery Kempe, the fifteenth-century mystic visionary who wrote the first English-language autobiography. The connections between the three women soon shifted into focus.

This second collection of This I Believe essays gathers 75 essayists - ranging from famous to previously unknown - completing the thought that begins the book's title. With contributors who run the gamut from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to ordinary folks like a diner waitress, an Iraq War veteran, a farmer, a new husband, and many others, This I Believe II, like the first New York Times best-selling collection, showcases moving and irresistible essays.

In this collection, Vivian Gornick turns her attention to a large theme in literature: the struggle for the semblance of inner freedom. In the essays collected here, she explores the work of V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.

Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940), war vieles: Philosoph, Kulturkritiker, Übersetzer - aber auch ein Schriftsteller. Auf der Flucht vor den Nazis, die Frankreich besetzt hatten, nahm er sich an der spanischen Grenze das Leben. Seine Denkbilder stellen in der Tat ein neues, eigenes Genre dar: Dort angesiedelt, wo Philosophie und Literatur ineinander fließen, dachte und schrieb er in Bildern. Ein Problem oder Thema versuchte er in bildhaften Aphorismen zu erklären. Faszinierende Miniaturen begegnen wir hier, einzigartig erzählt!

David Hume (1711-1776) remains a major figure in British philosophy, particularly for two or three works, including A Treatise on Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. But he was also a prolific essayist and historian. During his lifetime Essays Moral, Political and Literary went through a number of editions and collections, far outselling his philosophy. Now, the situation is reversed. But listening to the essays today it is difficult to see why.

The late writer and naturalist Ellen Meloy wrote and recorded a series of audio essays for KUER, NPR Utah in the 1990s. With understated humor and sharp insight, Meloy would illuminate facets of human connection to nature and challenge listeners to examine the world anew. Seasons: Desert Sketches is a compilation of these essays, transcribed from their original cassette tape recordings. Whether Meloy is pondering geese in Desolation Canyon or people at the local post office, listeners will delight in her signature wit and charm.

Old Truths and New Clichés collects nineteen essays—most of them previously unpublished in English—by Isaac Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic vision throughout an astonishing and prolific literary career spanning more than six decades. Expanding on themes reflected in his best-known work, the book illuminates in new ways the rich intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and biographical background of Singer's singular achievement as the first Yiddish-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

After Andrea Dworkin, the famous feminist philosopher and activist, passed away, her chief critic, Susie Bright, who many perceived as Dworkin's opposite, published a stirring obituary and series of essays in which she described the ways that Dworkin was a catalyst for the sex-positive movement in contemporary feminism.

New York Times best-selling author of Find Me and Call Me by Your Name André Aciman returns to the essay form in Homo Irrealis to explore what the present tense means to artists who cannot grasp the here and now. Irrealis is not about the present, or the past, or the future, but about what might have been but never was - but could in theory still happen. Homo Irrealis is a deep reflection of the imagination's power to shape our memories under time's seemingly intractable hold.

Wesley Morris, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and acclaimed New York Times critic, selects twenty-two essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

In the voices of 20 landmark memoirists - including New York Times best-selling authors Cheryl Strayed, Sue Monk Kidd, and Pat Conroy - a definitive book on the craft of autobiographical writing, indispensable for amateur and professional writers alike. For fans of Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir and Judith Barrington's Writing the Memoir, this follow-up to editor Meredith Maran's acclaimed writers' handbook, Why We Write, offers inspiration, encouragement, and pithy, practical advice for bloggers, journal-keepers, aspiring essayists, and memoirists.

The last 20 years have brought us the rise of the Internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of technology, and in Life in Code she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective.

In this love letter to reading, curated by Pandora Sykes in aid of the National Literacy Trust, bestselling and beloved writers share their favourite books: the ones they hold most dearly, that they return to time and again and that helped make them the writers they are.

By Catherine Ryan Hyde, the best-selling author of Don't Let Me Go and Pay It Forward, this entertaining and life-affirming collection of autobiographical stories explores the rewards and challenges of building a happy life of self-knowledge and creative inspiration, from a writer who has been through it all.

The Unreality of Memory collects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In this new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end - if indeed it will - and why we can't stop fantasizing about it.

Committed Writings brings together, for the first time, thematically linked essays from across Camus' writing career that reflect the scope of his political thought. This pivotal collection embodies Camus' radical and unwavering commitment to upholding human rights, resisting fascism, and creating art in the service of justice.

THE EARLY 2000s conjures images of inflatable furniture, flip phones, and low-rise jeans. It was a new millennium and the future looked bright, promising prosperity for all. The internet had arrived, and technology was shiny and fun. For many, it felt like the end of history: no more wars, racism, or sexism. But then history kept happening. Twenty-five years after the ball dropped on December 31st, 1999, we are still living in the shadows of the Y2K Era.

Although he is guided and inspired by the people he respects, and despite the insufficiency of his knowledge and experience - an insufficiency shared by most (or all) other humans, Wallace Shawn can’t see any real alternative to trying to figure out his own answers to the most essential questions about the world he lives in.

Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940), war vieles: Philosoph, Kulturkritiker, Übersetzer - aber auch ein Schriftsteller. Auf der Flucht vor den Nazis, die Frankreich besetzt hatten, nahm er sich an der spanischen Grenze das Leben. Sein Essay Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften beweist außerordentlich eindrucksvoll, dass eine an sich wissenschaftliche Analyse großer Literatur selbst große Literatur sein kann!