American Essays

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice For decades, affirmative action reshaped not just American higher education but the broader society, opening doors that had been closed for centuries and transforming who entered the pathways to power. But the Supreme Court in 2023 killed...

An uncompromising and sensually charged collection from one of the great practitioners of the short story The debut story collection from Los Angeles writer Kate Braverman assembles a vivid patchwork of interconnected narratives set in Southern California. Through brief, often haunting snapshots...

“Ahmad’s compassion, her deep care for the psychological and emotional nuances of her characters, never wavers.” – The New York Times Book Review In a searing collection by the award-winning author of The Return of Faraz Ali, characters seek to make their futures their own in a Pakistan...

On the eve of America's 250th anniversary comes a groundbreaking history and manifesto on the dangers of patriotism and the question of how to love a country. American patriotism is a love that kills. From the nation’s earliest days, it has been used to justify innumerable horrors: slavery...

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...

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...

The real story behind El Salvador's MS-13 gang and how they have perpetuated three generations of conflict and led to scores of migrants seeking a new life in the United States. Born in Los Angeles, the gang MS-13 was founded in the 1980s by Salvadoran refugees who had been hardened in a civil...

The New Yorker's award-winning war correspondent returns to his own country to chronicle its accelerating civic breakdown, in an indelible eyewitness narrative of startling explanatory power After years of living abroad and covering the Global War on Terrorism, Luke Mogelson went home in early...

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.

An ambitious memoir in essays by beloved bestselling author Reyna Grande that illuminates the hidden cost of the American Dream and the complex journey of healing that follows survival. Reyna Grande has spent her career powerfully capturing the raw reality of life across borders. Her memoirs...

“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...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today From the creator of Elle’s “Eric Reads the News,” a heartfelt and hilarious memoir-in-essays about growing up seeing the world differently, finding unexpected hope, and experiencing every awkward...

How the world broke—and how we can still save it The liberal world order that emerged after World War II—and expanded triumphantly following the Cold War—is unraveling. Multilateral cooperation is giving way to multipolar rivalry and conflict. Global norms are eroding. What comes next will...

A piercing short story collection that explores the feverish hunger and dizzying pleasure of girlhood and queer coming-of-age in a small town, from an acclaimed emerging writer Set mostly in and around a small working class neighborhood, Clark explores the lives of young Black girls, women, and...

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America unites centuries of essential American voices to understand our national debates and divisions from 1619 to the present, with his signature commentary on the consequential speeches, letters, and essays that led us to this moment. In...

A New York Times bestseller “Reading Davis is like returning to the classroom of the best teacher you ever had!” —People magazine From the arrival of Columbus through the historic election of Barack Obama and beyond, Kenneth C. Davis carries readers on a rollicking ride through more...

This program is read by the author. For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action...

In his 1996 #1 New York Times bestseller We’re Right, They’re Wrong, political strategist James Carville eviscerated the Republican economic agenda and debunked many of the GOP’s ludicrous positions on national issues such as health care, welfare, tax reform, and economic growth. Now...

In his bravura account of Warhol's life and work, scholar and culture critic Wayne Koestenbaum gets past the contradictions and reveals the man behind the blond wig and dark glasses. Nimbly weaving brilliant and witty analysis into an absorbing narrative, Koestenbaum makes a convincing case for...

Encompassing themes of race, education, fame, law, and America’s past and future, these essays are James Alan McPherson at his most prescient and invaluable. Born in segregated 1940s Georgia, McPherson graduated from Harvard Law School only to give up law and become a writer. In 1978, he became the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But all the while, McPherson was also writing and publishing nonfiction that stand beside contemporaries such as James Baldwin and Joan Didion, as this collection amply proves.