American Essays

This collection contains 21 reviews of artistic events and artifacts which originally appeared between 1877 and 1889. Clearly on display is Wilde's comprehensive knowledge of contemporary painting, fashion, and literature, as well as his capacity to create paradoxical aphorisms, which is such a feature of more substantial works like The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor. Andrew Sean Greer, “an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humor with sharp poignancy” (Washington Post), selects twenty stories out of...

From the author of the “thrilling” (The Christian Science Monitor) novel The Other Typist comes an evocative, multilayered story of ambition, success, and secrecy in 1950s New York. In 1958, Greenwich Village buzzes with beatniks, jazz clubs, and new ideas—the ideal spot for three...

Author and essayist Kiese Laymon is one of the most unique, stirring, and powerful new voices in American social and cultural commentary. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of Laymon's essays, touching on subjects ranging from family, race, violence, and celebrity to music, writing, and coming of age in the rural Mississippi Gulf Coast. Laymon's writing is unflinchingly honest, while also being smart, lacerating, and unexpectedly funny.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus...

The police murders of two Black men, Philando Castile and George Floyd, frame this searing exploration of the historical and fictional narratives that white America tells itself to justify and maintain white supremacy. From the country's founding through the summer of Black Lives Matter in 2020, David Mura unmasks how white stories about race attempt to erase the brutality of the past and underpin systemic racism in the present.

In this poetic and haunting tale set in contemporary Appalachia, New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash illuminates lives shaped by violence and a powerful connection to the land. Les, a long-time sheriff just three-weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own...

The author of the The Children’s Blizzard delivers an epic work of twentieth century history through the riveting story of one extraordinary Jewish family With cinematic power and beauty, bestselling author David Laskin brings to life the upheavals of the twentieth century through the story of...

A powerful, timely, dazzling new collection of poems from Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead—to be published simultaneously with his latest work of literary criticism, Watch Your Language The three sections of Terrance Hayes’ seventh collection explore how...

From America’s preeminent columnist, named by the Financial Times the most influential commentator in the nation, a must-have collection of Charles Krauthammer’s essential, timeless writings. A brilliant stylist known for an uncompromising honesty that challenged conventional wisdom at...

ケイ・ヘザリ（「ＮＨＫラジオ英会話」元レギュラー・ゲスト）のエッセイ単行本『American Pie』の中から厳選した17本を、著者自らが英語で朗読。

An urgent manifesto for global democracy from Joshua Wong, the 23-year-old phenomenon leading Hong Kong's protests - and Nobel Peace Prize nominee - with an introduction by Ai Weiwei With global democracy under threat, we must act together to defend out rights: now. When he was 14, Joshua Wong...

These 13 stories by the author of The Invisible Man "approach the elegance of Chekhov" (Washington Post) and provide "early explorations of (Ellison's) lifelong fascination with the 'complex fate' and 'beautiful absurdity' of American identity" (John Callahan). First serial to The New Yorker...

A new collection of electric, searing stories from award-winning, bestselling author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. The characters in Songs for the Flames are men and women touched by violence—sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing—but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire and by...

W. E. B. Du Bois was the foremost Black intellectual of his time. The Souls of Black Folk, his most influential work, is a collection of 14 beautifully written essays, by turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical. Here, Du Bois records the cruelties of racism, celebrates the strength and pride of black America, and explores the paradoxical "double-consciousness" of African American life.

The journeys of Paul Theroux take place not only in exotic, unexpected places of the world but in the thoughts, reading, and emotions of the writer himself. A gathering of people, places, and ideas in fifty glittering pieces of gold...

With Virginia Woolf as a guide, the stories of eight radical 20th century women--wanderers, rebels, explorers, mentors--who made a life for themselves in spite of everything. Everything that changed in the 20th century changed more dramatically for women. Her Own Voice tells the stories of eight...

A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line. Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick...

A classic Faulkner novel which explores the lives of a family of characters in the South. An aging black who has long refused to adopt the black's traditionally servile attitude is wrongfully accused of murdering a white man...

New York Times–bestselling author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman presents a unique Audio Companion for Chuck Klosterman X, in which he contextualizes and reads from the collection of his best articles and essays, providing both a fascinating tour of the past decade and an ideal...