Essays Life

Vidyan Ravinthiran was born in the north of England to Sri Lankan Tamils, and moved to the United States five years ago. Considering identity in both its political and psychological senses, he leaps adventurously between memoir and criticism, understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. This electric, compelling hybrid memoir discovers a new way of writing about the self and also literature.

Short Stuff is a compilation of both narrative and poetic forms. I have always loved writing, but it took some jolts from my life journey to lead to more introspection and more freedom to hone these writings into some publishable form.

Reporting from the potholes midway through life's journey, Allen addresses these and other more serious matters, like the rude awakenings of being single after 25 years, of mothering a teenager, and of living with a serious illness. She also discusses life's everyday trials, like the horrors of attempting a crafts project, the anxieties of being a houseguest, and the ever-changing rules of recycling.

With stories that entertain as much as they inform, renowned evolutionist David Sloan Wilson outlines the basic principles of evolution and shows how, when properly understood, they can illuminate the length and breadth of creation, from the origin of life to the nature of religion. What is...

In 1958, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in the United States to immediate controversy and best-sellerdom. More than 60 years later, this phenomenal novel generates as much buzz as it did when originally published. Central to countless issues at the forefront of our national discourse - art and politics, race and whiteness, gender and power, sexual trauma - Lolita lives on, in an afterlife as blinding as a supernova.

From the author of Start Where You Are comes an illustrated guide for moving through life’s biggest transitions with purpose and clarity. How It Feels to Find Yourself pairs vibrant color palettes with thoughtful observations and guidance for navigating the most important relationship in...

A beautiful and brilliant portrait of two generations of women. Set in India’s railway colonies, this is the story of Kamini and her mother Saroja, nicknamed Tamarind Mem due to her sour tongue. While in Canada beginning her graduate studies, Kamini receives a postcard from her mother saying...

'An oracle' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Articulate[s] a universal, feminine wisdom with such ferocity it feels like she's slapping the reader around the face' OBSERVER 'Equal parts self-lacerating, tender and witty' GLAMOUR 'Furious, sharp, funny, honest' iPAPER Sometimes when I drink wine out of a...

In a collection of personal essays that are “both rip-roaringly funny and sentimental, drawing natural (and justified) comparisons to David Sedaris and David Rakoff” (Esquire), longtime recording artist and actor Sam Harris recounts stories of friendship, love, celebrity, and growing up and...

From the co-author of Three Cups of Tea comes the inspiring story of two very different doctors—one from the United States, the other from Nepal—united in a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness. In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work...

Jen Mann doesn't have a filter, which sometimes gets her in trouble with her neighbors, fellow PTA moms, and that one woman who tried to sell her sex toys at a home shopping party. Known for her hilariously acerbic observations on her blog, People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Mann now brings her sharp wit to bear on suburban life, marriage, and motherhood in this laugh-out-loud collection of essays. From the politics of joining a play group, to the thrill of moms' night out at the gun range, to the rewards of your most meaningful relationship, nothing's sacred or off-limits.

In these essays, Steven Garber challenges us to move beyond our fragmented sense of reality, and to view life differently. Once we discover that there is no chasm between heaven and earth, and begin to see the truest truths of the universe woven into the very meaning of life and labor, of learning and liturgy, we are able to understand the coherence between the work of God and our lives in the world.

"Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul." (Anthony Bourdain) Brad Phillips' collection of short stories adeptly walks a very thin line between taboo and propriety, with rigorous self-awareness and generosity. By confusing ideas around fiction and autobiography, Phillips writes with painful sincerity about shame, addiction, trauma, and the more troubling outreaches of sexual desire, with wit that is at odds with the subject matter. Brad Phillips is a well-known Canadian artist.

"It turns out that Russo the nonfiction writer is a lot like Russo the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He is affably disagreeable, wry, idiosyncratic, vulnerably bighearted, a craftsman of lubricated sentences."—Jay Fielden, New York Times Book Review A master of the novel, short story, and...

Many of us grew up scoring a thousand glorious NHL goals in our minds, and on our streets and corner rinks. We won the Stanley Cup over and over in our imaginations. What happened to those childhood heroics? We packed them in a box with our hockey cards and forgot them. Growing Up Hockey uses the heartwarming and comical exploits of a house-league third-liner to prompt us to re-live our memories of hockey glory.

A wry look at what the astonishing world of animal penises can tell us about how we use our own. The fallacy sold to many of us is that the penis signals dominance and power. But this wry and penetrating audiobook reveals that in fact nature did not shape the penis--or the human attached to...

Enjoy a good dose of therapeutic laughter with Anna's heartfelt stories that proclaim life is still beautiful (and ridiculously funny) is even when is difficult. Popular humor writer Anna Lind Thomas had an epiphany after her essay about a humiliating fart went mega-viral: Everything's funny...

A tribute to a great man, an important and interesting writer, an inspiring teacher, and a friend some will not likely find again. Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper wrote a memorable biography about their pal, C.S. Lewis. "...We have sought to tell his story as best we could, to lay before...

From the Nobel Prize winner and the acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes an engaging intellectual thriller and high romance set in Turkey about a young student whose life and identity is uprooted through the single act of reading a book. The protagonist of Orhan Pamuk's fiendishly...

Quintus Curtius is an attorney, writer, translator, and former marine officer. Expertly blending history, biography, philosophy, and the author's personal experience, this penetrating collection of essays achieves what one reviewer called "a perfect fluency in [a] dialogue with truth." The unifying theme is the nature of masculine identity and how that identity has been manifested. Drawing on examples from history and using sources in their original languages, Quintus Curtius' soaring vision combines lucid explanation with a passionate intensity like few other writers.