English Writing

Christopher Columbus needed a sponsor for a dangerous expedition, but the King of Portugal wasn't interested. He repackaged his proposal for the Queen of Spain. She put Columbus on retainer and the rest is history. Columbus may not have been the first to discover America, but he had a great publicist. That's where Jeff Blumenfeld comes in. For many years, using a PR specialty called adventure marketing, Jeff has connected explorers and their projects with corporate sponsors looking to demonstrate product performance in extreme conditions.

"Without The Artist's Way, there would have been no Eat, Pray, Love.” —Elizabeth Gilbert The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life. Still as vital...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An accessible and inspirational guide to bringing the art and creativity of songwriting into your life, from the Grammy-winning cofounder of Wilco and Uncle Tupelo There are few creative acts more mysterious and magical than writing a song. But what if the goal...

This collection of original essays covers the turf that made Didion a sensation - Hollywood and Patty Hearst; Malibu, Manson and the Mojave; the Summer of Love and the Central Park Five - while bringing together some of the finest voices of today's Los Angeles and beyond. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a love letter and thank you note; personal memoir and social commentary; cultural history and literary critique.

“One of those life-changing reads that makes you see—or, in this case, hear—the whole world differently.” —Megan Angelo, author of Followers “At times chilling, often funny, and always perceptive and cogent, Cultish is a bracing reminder that the scariest thing about cults is that...

Writing advice tends to be full of "rules" and "tips" which are either too broad to be helpful or outright wrong. In On Writing and Worldbuilding, we will discuss specific and applicable ideas to consider, from effective methods of delivering exposition and foreshadowing, to how communication, commerce, and control play into the fall of an empire.

From the bestselling author of Waking Up and The End of Faith, a collection of the best conversations from his wildly popular, often controversial podcast, Making Sense. “Civilization rests on a series of successful conversations.” —Sam Harris Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philosopher...

From bestselling and award-winning author and professor Elizabeth McCracken comes an irresistible look at the art of writing. Writing can feel like an endless series of decisions. How does one face the blank page? Move a character around a room? Deal with time? Undertake revision? The good and...

The vast majority of writers begin the storytelling process with only a partial understanding of where to begin. Some labor their entire lives without ever learning that successful stories are as dependent upon good engineering as they are artistry. But the truth is, unless you are master of the form, function, and criteria of successful storytelling, sitting down and pounding out a first draft without planning is an ineffective way to begin. Story Engineering starts with the criteria and the architecture of storytelling, the engineering and design of a story....

In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land, explaining how a dusty hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up, as well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question, and Dr Kellogg of cornflakes fame.

Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station is intellectual history on a grand scale, full of romance, idealism, intrigue, and conspiracy, that traces the revolutionary ideas that shaped the modern world from the French Revolution up through Lenin's arrival at Finland Station in St. Petersburg in 1917. Fueled by Wilson's own passionate engagement with the ideas and politics at play, it is a lively and vivid, sweeping account of a singular idea—that it is possible to construct a society based on justice, equality, and freedom—gaining the power to change history.

With all his family and friends gone, one-hundred-year-old Murray McBride is looking for a reason to live. He finds it in Jason Cashman, a ten-year-old boy with a terminal heart defect and a list of five things he wants to do before he dies. Together, they race against the limited time each has left, ticking off wishes one by one. Along the way, Murray remembers what it's like to be young, and Jason fights for the opportunity to grow old. But when tragedy strikes, their worlds are turned upside-down, and an unexpected gift is the only thing that can make Jason's final wish come true.

An intimate memoir by the controversial and outspoken, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter about his complicated New York childhood, volunteering for combat, and his struggles and triumphs making such films as Platoon, Midnight Express, and Scarface. Before the international success of...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The twentieth anniversary edition of the classic story of an incredible group of students and the teacher who inspired them, featuring updates on the students’ lives, new journal entries, and an introduction by Erin Gruwell Now a public television documentary...

In less than a year, Neil Peart lost both his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie. Faced with overwhelming sadness and isolated from the world in his home on the lake, Peart was left without direction. That lack of direction lead him on a 55,000 mile journey by motorcycle across much of North America, down through Mexico to Belize, and back again.

Give your toddlers a challenge with "Reverse Alphabet with Rhymes: Critical Thinking for Toddlers." This book offering an engaging twist to traditional alphabet learning. Dive into the world of letters in reverse, accompanied by delightful rhymes, to unlock a host of benefits for your little one. Why should you choose this book? Firstly, it goes beyond the ABCs, boosting your child's cognitive skills. Learning the alphabet backward creates a new and exciting challenge, stimulating their memory, problem-solving, and analytical abilities in a playful and enjoyable way.

Ninety crime writers from the world’s oldest and most famous crime writing network give tips and insights into successful crime and thriller fiction. Howdunit! offers a fresh perspective on the craft of crime writing from leading exponents of the genre, past and present. The book offers invaluable advice to people interested in writing crime fiction, but it also provides a fascinating picture of the way that the best crime writers have honed their skills over the years.

The Book of Satoshi, the collected writings of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of the bitcoin. The foreword was written by Jeff Berwick.

With Stanley Crouch's untimely death in 2020, American literature lost "a critic without peer" (Ta-Nehisi Coates). Born in Los Angeles in 1945, Crouch—a towering stylist, fearless columnist, and without question, one of the finest jazz critics of all time—was Rabelaisian both in stature and in intellectual appetite. Beloved yet cantankerous, Crouch delighted and enflamed the passions of his readers in equal measure, whether writing about race, politics, literature, or music.

Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.