Classic Essays

"Poets live the lives all of us live," says Bill Moyers, "with one big difference. They have the power--the power of the word--to create a world of thoughts and emotions other can share. We only have to learn to listen." In a series of fascinating conversations with thirty-four American poets...

I meet Jesus on the day I get home from the war. I’m on the beach, but I don’t know how I got here. My mind is as dark as the night. . . . I spend the whole night on the beach. But when the sun’s faint light begins to bend around the Earth, I see him. . . . There, coming toward me, out of...

The fourteen stories gathered here, which have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, Harper's, McSweeney's, and Playboy, as well as in The O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Stories volumes, display T. C. Boyle's imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity and astonishing range. There are the...

Of Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley says that "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels." Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life. Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his...

La isla oculta no es otro libro más sobre Cuba, un país que forma parte de nuestro imaginario colectivo desde su Revolución, sino una colección de crónicas que nos lleva a sus lugares menos conocidos con una mirada conmovedora, triste y a la vez pícara. Un puzle del último lustro de Cuba...

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was a short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat. The short story "The Devil and Tom Walker" is about a miserly man who makes a deal with the devil. Irving’s fictional character Diedrich Knickerbocker is a Dutch-American historian and narrator of "The Conspiracy of the Cocked Hats" and the “golden age” of Wouter van Twiller, the Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam.

Notable masonic and esoteric writer A. E. Waite left behind a treasure trove of writings and translations. Included here are some of his varied essays.

An experiment. A declaration. A spiritual awakening. Noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months, and two days chronicling his near-isolation in a small cabin he built in the woods near Walden Pond, on land owned by his mentor and the father of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Immersing himself in nature and solitude, Thoreau sought to develop a greater understanding of society amidst a life of self-reliance and simplicity. Originally published in 1854, Walden remains one of the most celebrated works in American literature.

A memoir in verse from one of America's legendary poets In a New York Times review of Alice Notley’s 2007 collection In the Pines, Joel Brouwer wrote that “the radical freshness of Notley’s poems stems not from what they talk about, but how they talk, in a stream-of-consciousness style...

The prescient feminist fable and international classic described as “The Handmaid’s Tale for our age” (The Economist), from the Booker-shortlisted author of Stone Yard Devotional When the women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the...

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...

Una concisa y legible perspectiva de Cuba, revisada a fondo y escrita por cubanos para cualquier persona interesada en comprender rápidamente la turbulenta historia del país insular. Cuba: una breve historia abarca el período prehispánico, pasando por la lucha de Cuba por mantener la...

Wer Karl Kraus im Literaturbetrieb des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts kannte, verehrte oder verabscheute ihn - Gleichgültigkeit löste er jedenfalls nicht aus. Mit nur 25 Jahren gründete Kraus in Wien die Zeitschrift Die Fackel, mit der 1899 seine steile Karriere als Journalist und Kritiker, Dramatiker und Satiriker begann. Bis zu seinem Tod im Jahr 1936 galt er als scharfzüngigster Beobachter des kulturellen und politischen Zeitgeschehens. Seine Worte richteten sich gegen die Verlotterung der Sprache, gegen Phrasendrescher und Kriegstreiber, gegen Korruption und Heuchelei.

A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging...

A powerful, award-winning novel that follows the lives of two women as democracy starts to crumble in Hong Kong. One summer morning, college roommates, Ah Lei and Panda, wake up with very different reactions to the night before. They have been chased and tear-gassed in the streets of their city...

Finally finish the first draft of your novel with a method that is designed to bring efficiency, speed, and joy to the process. Does it seem like you’ve spent so much time writing and are left only with a folder full of false starts? Stories you were so excited to write but then gave up a few...

How does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word is changed? In this playful, meditative exploration of translating the world’s most beloved playwright, Daniel Hahn guides us through the magic of bringing the Bard to a global audience. Shakespeare may have breathed the air of...

In popular imagination, Lala Lajpat Rai is frequently associated with Bhagat Singh, who, by assassinating J.P. Saunders, avenged Rai’ s death, caused by a police lathi charge, and was hanged for it. Lajpat Rai is also remembered for his fervent opposition to British rule.In recent decades...

09.07 am. 12 de abril de 1961. Un cohete de alto secreto en la URSS. Un joven ruso se sienta en una minúscula cápsula encima del misil balístico intercontinental más potente de la Unión Soviética -diseñado originalmente para transportar una cabeza nuclear- y despega hacia el cielo. Se...

En una carta a su madre en 1954, un joven Ernesto Guevara escribió "Las Américas serán el teatro de mis aventuras de una manera mucho más significativa de lo que yo hubiera creído". En America Latina se narra la historia de esas aventuras, trazando la evolución del Che desde el joven e...