Showing titles in Essays

In Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality. "There is a signature motif discernible in...

From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, and with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler, a collection of thoughts - always adroit, often acerbic - on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation. Ursula K. Le Guin has taken listeners to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she's in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice - sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical - shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula's blog, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters.

TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR In this collection of essays, the author of Demon Copperhead and The Lacuna brings to us (out of one of history's darker moments) an extended love song to the...

'These beautiful essays, inspired by a life of exploring other cultures through the rituals of cooking and eating - and thinking about cooking and eating - are manna for the hungry listener.' A Times Audiobook of the Year 'One of her finest books yet.' Bee Wilson, the Sunday Times 'Diana Henry's...

'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 documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks...

Bloomsbury presents A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, read by George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong and Renée Elise Goldsberry. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PICKED BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, IRISH TIMES...

Though uncompromising, polemical and argumentative, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) made a lasting impact on 19th-century culture as a multi-talented man of letters. And though his lengthy history of the French Revolution proved his major scholarly legacy, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History remains perhaps his most popular and accessible work. It presented his deep-seated belief that ‘Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here’.  

Why the ongoing fascination with the ancient world? This witty, approachable book asks why—for better or (sometimes) worse—antiquity continues to exert such a powerful hold on the contemporary imagination. Recalling a formative childhood encounter with a four-thousand-year-old piece of bread in a museum, Beard introduces the idea of thauma, or wonder, that kick-started a lifetime engaging with classics.

On 10th June 2020, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie died suddenly in Nigeria. In this tender and powerful essay, expanded from the original New Yorker text, his daughter, a self-confessed daddy's girl, remembers her beloved father. Notes on Grief is at once a tribute to a long life of grace and wisdom, the story of a daughter's fierce love for a parent and a revealing examination of the layers of loss and the nature of grief.

Incisive, wide-ranging and witty, it explores the questions, anxieties and agendas that consume our lives. Pandora Sykes interrogates the stories we’ve been sold and the ones we tell ourselves - from happiness to wellness, womanhood to consumerism - in ways that are both surprising and reassuring.

“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)

From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos - in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.  

Transcendence for Beginners examines life writing and philosophy across certain European and Indian traditions, exploring questions of childhood and mortality, art and religion, beauty and loss. Informed by her experience as a biographer of Søren Kierkegaard and George Eliot as well as her own life, Clare Carlisle asks what one human existence can reveal, and how writing can transmit its truth.

Between 1821 and 1826, the prolific writer and journalist William Cobbett travelled the countryside of the South of England on foot and horseback. Rural Rides is a fascinating account of his journeys, and depicts a way of life in transition, juxtaposing lyrical descriptions of the countryside with criticism of the poverty of agricultural workers. A man of radical politics who encouraged the rural rising of 1830, Cobbett went on to become MP for Oldham and sought to represent the interests of both industrial and agricultural workers. Above all, Rural Rides celebrates agrarian England.

In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill s Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, famously referred to by Peter Levi, professor of poetry at Oxford University, as 'the greatest poem written in either Ireland or Britain during the eighteenth century'. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story.

And Yet... gathers the previously uncollected essays of the late Christopher Hitchens into a final volume of peerless prose from one of the great thinkers of our times. Christopher Hitchens was an unparalleled, prolific writer who raised the polemical essay to a new art form over a lifetime of thinking and debating the defining issues of our times. 

From legendary journalist Gay Talese, a collection of his greatest reporting on New York City. “Along with Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others, Mr. Talese has been acclaimed as a virtuoso of the novelistic New Journalism.” —Wall Street Journal “They fly in...

"When I'm writing non-fiction I have to be very aware of my tendency to let the words take their own course, leading me softly, happily, away from fact, away from rigorous connection of ideas, toward my native country, fiction and poetry, where truths are expressed and thoughts connected in an...

Brought to you by Penguin. I can change the story because I am the story. With her execution looming, a woman is fighting for her life. Every night she tells a story. Every morning, she lives one more day. One Aladdin Two Lamps cracks open the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and One...

Brought to you by Penguin. In this book inspired by her phenomenally popular Substack newsletter, India Knight explores the essence of what makes a home, debunking intimidating ideas about ‘taste’ and trends, offering practical and reassuring advice for every room, and above all celebrating...