Essays Anthology

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives.

A bestselling historian takes readers on an intellectual and cultural adventure, offering a carefully curated guide to great, short nonfiction works by some of the world’s most influential writers—from Plato to Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway to bell hooks, and Marcus Aurelius to Joan Didion...

It will come as a surprise to some readers that the greater part of Jorge Luis Borges's extraordinary writing was not in the genres of fiction or poetry, but in the various forms of non-fiction prose. His thousands of pages of essays, reviews, prologues, lectures, and notes on politics and...

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin draws upon his three-decade career in the criminal justice system with his characteristic wit and his fascination with misfits and malfeasance. A lifetime immersed in New York City feeds short stories that evoke a landscape of characters rife with personal arrogance and misjudgment; and nonfiction essays about toeing the line when the line keeps disappearing.

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025 In Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Written originally in Kannada, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a...

A finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker A delightful and majestic reckoning with the ascent of American fiction in the twentieth century through the prism of the under-known man who had an astonishing amount...

Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in...

Originally published in 1973, the groundbreaking, uninhibited story of Isadora Wing and her desire to fly free caused a national sensation. In The New York Times, Henry Miller compared it to his own classic, Tropic of Cancer and predicted that ""this book will make literary history..."" It has...

“Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers and everyone in between.” —Jennifer Egan From Dani Shapiro...

A captivating anthology and heartfelt tribute to the horror genre featuring essays from several of the most celebrated contemporary horror writers including, Grady Hendrix, Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, Josh Malerman, Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and Rachel Harrison. For twenty-five...

Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture...

Hanuman is an outstanding scholar, a fearless warrior, and the ideal lieutenant: intelligent, totally committed to his master, selfless and humble. Born into the Vanar tribe, a clan of the upa-devatas (demi-deities), he represents the four best-known divine attributes akhand brahmacharya...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A rich, captivating, and darkly humorous look into the evolution of apocalyptic thought, exploring how film and literature interact with developments in science, politics, and culture, and what factors drive our perennial obsession with the end of the world...

A physicist explains daily phenomena from the mundane to the magisterial. Take a look up at the stars on a clear night and you get a sense that the universe is vast and untouchable, full of mysteries beyond comprehension. But did you know that the key to unveiling the secrets of the cosmos is as...

Classic warped and wonderful stories from a “genius” (The New York Times) and master storyteller. Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Etgar Keret’s stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. As with the best writers of...

Emily Nemens’s Clutch follows a group of five friends as they navigate the biggest challenges of their lives, asking: When you’re hanging on by your fingernails, how can you extend a hand to the ones you love? As undergrads, Gregg, Reba, Hillary, Bella, and Carson formed the kind of rare...

A fascinating, first-of-its-kind exploration of Stephen King and his most iconic early books, based on groundbreaking research and interviews with King—all conducted by the first scholar to be given extended access to his private archives “A treat for fans of Stephen King.”—Paul Tremblay...

The Ukraine is a collection of twenty-six pieces that deliberately blur the line between nonfiction and fiction, conjuring the essence of a beloved country through its tastes, smells, and sounds, its small towns and big cities, its people and their compassion and indifference, simplicities and complications. The Ukraine conveys to listeners a place that Chapeye and his countrymen are currently fighting for with their lives. The book features a preface by the author, which he composed on his phone from the front lines.

This definitive and magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation is one of the rare English translations in full of the epic. Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers. Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war...

On the Shortness of Life was written by Seneca around the year 49AD. He argues that we waste so much time because we do not properly value it. We expend great effort in protecting other valuables such as money and property, but because time appears intangible, we allow others to occupy it and take time away from us. Wise people, on the other hand, understand that time is the most valuable of all resources, and with effort can free themselves from external control to engage in meaningful introspection and create an intentional life.