American Essays

A luminous memoir-in-essays exploring place, identity, and what it means to grow up queer and Asian in the American South.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY DUGGINS PRIZE "Hypnotic...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." —Time Magazine "R.O...

A New York Times Notable Book A revised collection with thirteen essays, including six new to this edition and seven from the original edition, by the “star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and singularly beautiful” (NPR). Brilliant and...

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.

""A gathering of gorgeous short pieces"" (Library Journal), Blue Pastures collects fifteen of Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning poet Mary Oliver's prose works about nature, writing, and herself. ""This transcendent collection is Oliver's joyful sharing of her love of her craft...

A collection of the year’s top food and travel writing, selected by the trailblazing New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated host of Taste the Nation and Top Chef Padma Lakshmi. “Food and travel are natural companions,” writes guest editor Padma Lakshmi. From this pairing...

A powerful read redefining the meaning of genius while illuminating the ways in which Black Americans have found various ways to thrive despite insurmountable obstacles. **A Washington Post 50 Notable Nonfiction Books of 2025 Pick** Black genius sits at the heart of the American story. In his...

In this essay originally aired in the 1950s, historian Arnold Toynbee describes how relating to others, even when it causes us to suffer, makes us human, in "I Agree With A Pagan", his contribution to NPR’s This I Believe series. This I Believe is a National Public Radio program that features...

A darkly comic memoir-in-essays about the scam of the American Dream and doing whatever it takes to survive in the Sunshine State—from the award-winning author of High-Risk Homosexual “Relatable, funny and deeply heartfelt, this memoir is one not to miss.”—Today “Edgar Gomez is a young...

Hailed as "astonishingly powerful" by The New York Times, and "written perfectly" by The Washington Post, Joe Klein's #1 bestseller, Primary Colors, was the most-talked-about political novel of the past century. Now acclaimed journalist and author Joe Klein returns with another brilliant and...

In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson took the stage at Harvard and delivered what would become one of the most influential speeches in American intellectual history. The American Scholar was not just a lecture—it was a manifesto, a call to arms for a young nation searching for its own cultural identity. Emerson challenged his audience to break free from European intellectual traditions, urging them to think for themselves, to create, and to embrace the vast potential of the American mind.

The early fiction of one of the nation’s most celebrated writers, Truman Capote, as he takes his first bold steps into the canon of American literature Recently rediscovered in the archives of the New York Public Library, these short stories provide an unparalleled look at Truman Capote...

The groundbreaking work on being homosexual in America—available again only from Penguin Classics and with a new foreword by Dan Savage Originally published in 1971, Merle Miller’s On Being Different is a pioneering and thought-provoking book about being homosexual in the United States...

Entre los intelectuales de izquierda, Noam Chomsky se distingue por su especial relación con el activismo, y por ser él mismo un activista político de larguísimo recorrido, además de un crítico implacable y clarividente. En este libro, que puede leerse como el legado de Chomsky a los...

For almost a century after the U.S. Constitution went into effect, few Americans seem to have questioned the legitimacy of the Revolution. Since the Progressive generation of historians began the work of serious criticism and revision, however, students of American life have largely learned to live with a more complicated understanding of the revolutionary legacy. Smith's treatment of the era charts space for libertarians to both criticize and revere the American heritage.

“Dead Girls is everything I want in an essay collection: provocative lines of inquiry, macabre humor, blistering intelligence... I love this book. I want to take it into the middle of a crowded room and hold it up and scream until someone tackles me the ground; even then, I’d probably keep...

Since 1998, the Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Group has celebrated National Poetry Month by emailing a poem-a-day throughout the month of April to over 25,000 devoted poetry fans. In April 2006, Knopf introduced the Poem-a-Day podcast, which featured poets including Kevin Young and James Merrill...

Dismantles the Woody Guthrie we have been taught—the rough-and-ready rambling’ man—to reveal an artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for political struggle Woody Guthrie is often mythologized as the classic American “rambling’ man,” a real-life Steinbeckian folk hero who...

They killed her father for speaking out. For decades, the oil-rich Niger Delta—an important wetland and farming area—has seen its natural environment devastated as a result of oil extraction that has brought little economic benefit to its people. Following a nonviolent campaign for...

Acclaimed New Yorker contributor Lauren Michele Jackson delivers an essay collection devoted to the back—and the conflicting ideas we load onto it. Moving across literature, film, sport, visual art, and U.S. history, Jackson probes how the back has carries powerful ideas about beauty, gender...