Essays Life

From Michael Korda, author of the New York Times bestselling Eisenhower biography Ike and the captivating Battle of Britain book With Wings Like Eagles, comes the critically-acclaimed definitive biography of T. E. Lawrence—the legendary British soldier, strategist, scholar, and adventurer...

Scripture reveals a God who meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be. No More Faking Fine is your invitation to get honest with God through the life-giving language of lament. If you've ever been given empty clichés during challenging times, you know how painful it is to be...

A paradigm-shifting blend of science, religion, and philosophy for the agnostic, spiritual-but-not-religious, and scientifically minded reader Many people are fed up with the way traditional religion alienates them. Too often it perpetuates conflict, vilifies science, and undermines reason...

In America and in England, faltering economies at home and failed wars abroad have generated a political and intellectual hysteria. It is a derangement manifested in a number of ways: nostalgia for imperialism, xenophobic paranoia, and denunciations of an allegedly intolerant left. These symptoms can be found even among the most informed of Anglo-America.

A love story that feels both new and achingly true from one of Japan’s most acclaimed writers, capturing the intensity, uncertainties, and intimacy of falling for someone for the first time. Art student Isogai first models for one of his tutors, the much older Yuri, then begins a passionate...

In the tradition of Anthony Bourdain and Emily Witt, celebrated burlesque performer, sex educator, and social worker Fancy Feast gives readers a backstage pass to the nightlife and sex industries, examining our cultures hang-ups and obsessions with bodies, desire, and even love When Fancy Feast...

This definitive collection of beloved Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's finest speeches covers topics as varied as the law, faith, virtue, pastimes, and his heroes and friends. Featuring a foreword written and narrated by longtime friend Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and an intimate...

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.

At age 30, Joshua Fields Millburn left his six-figure career, ditched most of his material possessions, and started focusing on life's most important aspects. Once he embraced his newfound minimalist lifestyle, he never looked back. Suffice it to say, everything has changed in Millburn's life in the last three years. After his mother died in October 2009 and his marriage ended a month later, he began questioning everything in his life: his material possessions, his career, his goals, his health, his relationships, his path in life.

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.

Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical conditions as medical problems and nondiseases as diseases, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to exposing the dangers of "medicalizing" the conditions of some who simply refuse to conform to society's expectations. Szasz argues that modern psychiatry's tireless ambition to explain the human condition has led to the treatment of life's difficulties and oddities as clinical illnesses rather than as humanity revealed in its fullness.

Uttara Rao, Janaki Paranjape, Arvind Shah, K. Subba Rao and Sumitra Iyer first cross each other’s paths at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1999. Coming from vividly different backgrounds, the five soon became friends. As they navigate relationships, careers and life, they vow to...

The dramatic untold story of Eugénie de Montijo, the woman who created haute couture, fought for women’s rights, opened France’s schools to girls and ruled the country as its last empress, yet today remains almost unknown. Although a nineteenth-century woman, her almost twenty-first-century...

Figuring out who you want to be in life is never easy. In High Points and Lows, Austin Carty traces his own stumbling journey toward adulthood and true faith, drawing on lessons from pop culture and Christianity. In these funny and moving essays that address questions on faith, goals, and vocation, Carty offers an uplifting message for religious and secular audiences alike.

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...

Annie F. Downs admits she's not exactly the bravest girl in the world. She still cries sometimes when she leaves her parents' home in Georgia, she's never jumped out of a plane, and she rides roller coasters only to impress boys. But Annie knows that courage resides inside each and every one of us, and she's on a mission to triumph over her own fears while encouraging listeners to do the same.

The autobiographical essays in The Girls in My Town create an unforgettable portrait of a family in Los Angeles. Reaching back to her grandmother's childhood and navigating through her own girlhood and on to the present, Angela Morales contemplates moments of loss and longing, truth and beauty, motherhood and daughterhood.

Funny, candid, and searchingly self-aware, this essay collection tells the story of Chelsea Martin’s coming of age as an artist. We are with Chelsea as an 11-year-old atheist, trying to will an alien visitation to her neighborhood; fighting with her stepfather and grappling with a Tourette’s diagnosis as she becomes a teenager; falling under the sway of frenemies and crushes in high school; going into debt to afford what might be a meaningless education at an expensive art college.

It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly—to everything associated with the words “human,”...

Brought to you by Penguin. A groundbreaking memoir about what it means to be a disabled woman in Britain today from the acclaimed journalist and author, including insights and personal stories from over 50 contributors 'No one really talks about it. No one really talks about what it is to be a...