American Essays

In this thought-provoking and playful short story collection, David Foster Wallace nudges at the boundaries of fiction with inimitable wit and seductive intelligence. Wallace's stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many guises...

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life can not matter. The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric and the essay in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America.

“When truth teller and careful writer bell hooks offers a book, I like to be standing at the bookshop when it opens.” –Maya Angelou Renowned visionary bell hooks explored the meaning of love in American culture with the critically acclaimed bestseller All About Love: New Visions. She...

“To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,” recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. “They were windows into emotions I had and hadn’t had, into other settings and...

How a Michigan farm boy became the richest man in America is a classic, almost mythic tale, but never before has Henry Ford’s outsized genius been brought to life so vividly as it is in this engaging and superbly researched biography. The real Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He set...

Read by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony Award-winning creator and star of the musical Hamilton, and Tony Award-winning actress, Karen Olivo. This brilliant narration adds another layer of lyricism and depth to this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic novel. Things have never been easy for Oscar...

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in 20th-century literature. In this charged collection of 15 essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists...

In recognition of her long and lauded career as a master essayist, a landmark collection including her most beloved pieces and some rarely seen work, rigorously curated by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author herself. With a foreword by Geoff Dyer. “A writer who never seems tired, who has never...

From New York Times bestselling author Ross Gay comes a "brilliant" intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection (Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate). In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we...

One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Boston Globe, and Entertainment Weekly A sharp-eyed, uniquely humane tour of America's cultural landscape―from high to low to lower than low―by the award-winning young star of...

In this “urgently relevant”* collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump...

The rollicking saga of reality television, a “sweeping” (The Washington Post) cultural history of America’s most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker writer—“a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture”...

From one of the most controversial personalities in the high-tech world comes this rare critique of the narcissism, ignorance and anti-communitarianism of the digital elite and their culture. Until now, the lofty pronouncements of the high-tech gurus and society's obsession with them have seldom...

Americans are caught up in bulk. We guiltily watch Amazon boxes pile up on the porch, wade through endless reviews to find the perfect product, and crave the comforting indulgence of a chain restaurant. In American Bulk, Emily Mester intertwines cultural critique and personal history to explore how the things we buy, eat, amass, and discard become an intimate part of our lives. With humor and sharp intellect, she reflects on the joys and anxieties of family Costco trips, how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty taught her the insidious art of the sale, and what it means to get Mall Sad.

An accessible, compelling introduction to today’s major policy issues from the New York Times columnist, best-selling author, and Nobel prize–winning economist Paul Krugman. There is no better guide than Paul Krugman to basic economics, the ideas that animate much of our public policy...

Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history...

From global art superstar Kent Monkman and his long-time collaborator Gisèle Gordon, a transformational work of true stories and imagined history that will remake readers’ understanding of the land called North America. For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent...

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller Named a best book of the year by Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and Kirkus Reviews “One of the best books on politics our era will see . . . A book of astonishing literary quality.” —Matthew Parris, The TLS “[Rory Stewart] walked across Asia, served...

From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us. Ross Gay’s essays have been called “exquisite” (Tracy K. Smith), “imperative” (the New...