Essays Life

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.

A young queer millennial physicist unveils some of the most mind-bending physics concepts in the universe—and uses them to illuminate their own fascinating life story “I see physics everywhere,” Karmela Padavic-Callaghan writes. “It offers itself to me when I try to make sense of all the...

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 daring and visionary new narrative of the emergence of life, one that refocuses our attention on the beautiful and mysterious tango between life and Earth itself, from Olivia Judson, the bestselling and award-winning author of Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation These are questions as...

"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...

Written by a marine scientist (and winner of French eloquence competitions), this work of narrative nonfiction blends Bill François’ personal story with that of sea creatures to create an original and exciting work. In poetic prose, he describes his unlikely journey from being a Parisian child, afraid of the water and crippled by self-consciousness, to an eloquent and self-assured young man with a passion for the ocean and all who inhabit it.

From This American Life contributor and self-described “history nerd” Sarah Vowell comes a collection of humorous and personal essays investigating American history, pop culture, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell travels through...

The heartfelt poetry and essays in Cradled by Skeletons impart an argument that all be welcomed, as all are worthy. At once intimate, poignant, and raw, the entries of Cuban American poet, essayist, and activist Marta Miranda-Straub s Cradled by Skeletons reflect how she lives, loves, and creates at the intersections of queerness, feminism, and of being an American immigrant of color.

Created and compiled by Charles Krauthammer before his death, The Point of It All is a powerful collection of the influential columnist's most important works. Spanning the personal, the political and the philosophical, it includes never-before-published speeches and a major new essay about the...

Life on the Mississippi expresses the full range of Twain's literary personality. It remains the most vivid, boisterous, and provocative account of the cultural and societal history of the Mississippi Valley, from 'the golden age' of steamboating to the violence wrought by the Civil War.

Have you ever looked at your email, then texts, then Facebook, then Twitter, then email, then Instagram, then Candy Crush, then texts, then Snapchat, then texts again, and now you’ve wasted the time you had set aside for more important things? Jedediah Bila has solved her own Obsessive...

Marcella Hazan is known as America's godmother of Italian cooking. The owner of her own cooking schools, and author of bestselling and award-winning cookbooks, she has collected invitations to cook at top restaurants around the world. Her story begins in Alexandria, Egypt, where an early...

Told through raw, hilarious, and uncomfortably honest essays, Joseph Tito peels back the layers of adulthood, identity, parenting, aging, and emotional chaos. One minute you’re laughing about childproof pill bottles, the next you’re quietly spiraling over your purpose in life—just like he did. And still does.

This is a continuation of the story of two dogs and a man out in the woods of Brown County, Indiana. It’s the murmurings of one retired guy about his life with the Golden Doodles he loves beyond words and their journey together. In addition, it’s full of memories, a life re-examined from childhood to the current Covid-19 world in which we all find ourselves.

The New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter delivers her first ever collection of essays—funny, poignant, deeply personal and sharply observed pieces, drawn from three decades of writing, which trace girls’ and women’s progress (or lack thereof) in...

A Simon & Schuster audiobook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every listener...

An electric, stylish—and very British—novel exploring the tensions and transgressions of relationships and sex, as one dysfunctional family gathers for a funeral After Mary’s sudden death, a fractured family reunites in a small English village for a funeral over a hot summer weekend. Patch...

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.

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.

Following in the tradition of Sara Ahmed (the originator of the concept "feminist killjoy"), Wunker brings memoir, theory, literary criticism, pop culture, and feminist thinking together in this collection of essays that take up Ahmed's project as a multi-faceted lens through which to read the world from a feminist point of view.