Short Essays

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Canceled Plans? –Check! Panic and Fear? – Check! Self- Isolation? – Check! Missing Friends? – Check! Gaining Weight? – Check! Binge-Watching TV? – Check! Lengthy Self - diggings? – Check! Hope? – Check, check, check! Who would have thought that Global Pandemic, Self-Isolation, Cluster, and a Lockdown were to become the trendiest words in 2020? Who would have imagined the world would freeze and people would stay home shattered with fear, panic, uncertainty towards their future? How do we adjust to this changing reality, when none of our questions have answers when plans turn ...

Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.

One of the most talented and creative authors working today, Neal Stephenson is renowned for his exceptional novels - works colossal in vision and mind-boggling in complexity. Exploring and blending a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, pop culture, and philosophy, his books are the products of a keen and adventurous intellect. Stephenson ponders a wealth of subjects, from movies and politics to David Foster Wallace and the Midwestern American College Town; and more.

In the Adirondacks, short carries are portages between waterways, and this book is a collection of short essays about wilderness, outdoor adventures, natural history and small town life - all of which connect with each other through the author's voice and deep sense of place.

Strange Thoughts is a collection of prose poems, short stories, epigrams, aphorisms, vignettes, and mini-essays. This book is the final installment in the pentalogy titled The Embrace of Light and Darkness. It is unique in that it consists predominantly of prose rather than poetry. The collection combines various aspects of existence, perception, and the relationship between oneself and the world. Every piece is a philosophical and artistic contemplation, comprising abstract thoughts and stunning imagery into a reflective cascade effortlessly flowing through various forms of expression. ...

Andrew Sullivan, “one of the most influential journalists of the last three decades” (The New York Times) and founding editor of The Daily Dish presents a collection of 60 his most iconic and powerful essays of social and political commentary from The New Republic, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, and more.

Stories that will make you laugh, cry, and feel a thousand emotions in between. Following on the heels of his critically acclaimed first book of short works, A Flamingo Under the Carousel, William John Rostron continues with this second compilation of published works that utilizes multiple genres. Again, the reader is treated to tales of fiction, non-fiction, and his unique style of “almost fiction.” He spans the globe with stories that take place in London, Paris, and Rome…not to mention the oceans of the world and outer space. Rostron’s imagination brings you to the mysterious ...

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin draws upon his three-decade career in the criminal justice system with his characteristic wit and his fascination with misfits and malfeasance. A lifetime immersed in New York City feeds short stories that evoke a landscape of characters rife with personal arrogance and misjudgment; and nonfiction essays about toeing the line when the line keeps disappearing.

In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.

Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's "Selected Shorts" not once but twice.

Novelist, cultural observer, and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces “under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous” points of view, she filets cherished shibboleths and the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken us.

From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.

Christopher Buckley at his best: an extraordinary, wide-ranging selection of essays both hilarious and poignant, irreverent and delightful. In his first book of essays since his 1997 best seller, Wry Martinis, Buckley delivers a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing. Listening to these essays is the equivalent of being in the company of a tremendously witty and enlightening companion.

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced.

Filled with his usual obsessions - sex, booze, gambling - More features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, his tortured, violent relationships with women, and his lurid escapades on the poetry reading circuit. Highlighting his versatility, the book ranges from thinly-veiled autobiography to purely fictional tales of dysfunctional suburbanites, disgraced politicians, and down-and-out sports promoters - climaxing with a long, hilarious adventure among French filmmakers.

Inspired by a personal moment of profound love and generosity, Trent Dalton, best-selling author and one of Australia's finest journalists, spent two months in 2021 speaking to people from all walks of life, asking them one simple and direct question: Can you please tell me a love story? The result is an immensely warm, poignant, funny, and moving book about love in all its guises.

Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other’s books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, “God willing, strike sparks off each other.” Here and Now is the result of that proposal: the epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, film festivals to incest, philosophy to politics....

A SHORT ESSAY highlighting some of the poetic effects of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Gives insight into Thomas's methods and underlying philosophy about poetry, imagery, and structure.

Having had occasion to look around for “something to read,” with long and short pieces that would not prove too deeply engaging, Leonard Wibberley—author of The Mouse that Roared as well as over 100 other novels—curated a personal selection of such choices from his writings. They are both published and unpublished works by this thoughtful and humorous man. Read all at once if one is so inclined, or savored in smaller samples, they offer selections to fit almost any mood. There is Prevarication Jones for a bit of humor, Concerning the Divinity for some personal philosophy, The ...