Essays Life

Innocence is lost to unforgettable experience in these brilliant stories by E. L. Doctorow, as full of mystery and meaning as any of the longer works by this American master. In “The Writer in the Family,” a young man learns the difference between lying and literature after he is induced...

Of a Happy Life is an essay written by Seneca around the year 58 AD. It was intended for his older brother Gallio, to whom Seneca also dedicated his dialogue entitled De Ira (On Anger). It is divided into 28 chapters that present the moral thoughts of Seneca at their most mature. Seneca explains that the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of reason - reason meant not only using logic, but also understanding the processes of nature.

In the first Quarterly Essay for 2011, David Malouf returns to one of the most fundamental questions and gives it a modern twist: what is it to live a good life? With grace and profundity, Malouf discusses new and old ways to talk about the self, morality and happiness. In an age of environmental peril, and in the wake of the global financial crisis, such questions have returned with new force - we live in unpredictable times and Homo economicus has been found wanting.

New York Times bestselling author and stand-up comedian Michael Ian Black (author of A Child’s First Book of Trump) delivers a “memorable and funny” (Kirkus Reviews) memoir about confronting his genetic legacy as he hits his forties. Black pulls no punches in this hilariously honest memoir...

By his longtime friend and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, the definitive biography of Larry McMurtry, the legendary author and screenwriter of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and Brokeback Mountain, who transformed our vision of the West. Before Larry McMurtry became one of the...

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.

From leading critic and essayist Emily Eakin, a stylish personal history of French theory and its unlikely domination of American culture When Emily Eakin arrived at Harvard in the late 1980s, she fell under the spell of an eclectic body of philosophical texts by a handful of French authors...

Short stories include biographical, humorous and imaginative fiction. Poetry is sprinkled throughout the book. Stories, essays and poetry cover both serious topics and fun insights. This book includes uplifting, positive and thought-provoking insights. Also, several Christmas stories. Audio version is done in three parts.

In this new collection of poems, essays, and flash fiction, the author once again exhibits her ability to write about both the light and dark sides of life. There are numerous poems and stories about nature: its kindness, cruelty, and wonder. There are frank expressions of the sadness and frustration she felt at the progressive loss of her eyesight and a poem about the social isolation that disability can bring. Other pieces, though, sing of joys as diverse as family closeness, the love of dogs, the delights of scents, and the power of the muse.

In this riveting portrait of George B. Schaller, the world’s leading field biologist, Miriam Horn captures the seventy years he spent living among wild animals in the world’s remotest regions, forever altering how we see—and save—the natural world In 1959, though just twenty-six years...

For current Regnum Christi members in every state of life, as well for inquirers and future members, the Statutes of the Federation will remain a firm reference point as we journey forward together serving the Church. And so, a short introduction to the Statutes - a presentation of their critical numbers and concepts, and of the new doors they open for living out the Regnum Christi vocation - could be a useful tool. That is what this Regnum Christi essay, What Is Regnum Christi? will attempt to provide.

Thailand, the land of smiles and golden dreams, is languishing, and Pattaya, its biggest fun city, is succumbing to a thousand ills. Pattaya Pains is about living in Pattaya over the long term. Even though the collection of essays, stories, and observations herein would relish the golden dream of painting Pattaya as a romantic hotspot where Thais and foreigners bond, it can’t do so - not only because East is East and West is West, but also because Thais just don’t see foreigners in a good light.

This is the remarkable and tragic story of Oscar Wilde, legendary wit and conversationalist, author of perhaps the most perfect comedy in the English language, yet seemingly doomed by his own flawed temperament to suffer at the hands of a censorious and hypocritical society...

“A must-read for today’s politics” (San Francisco Chronicle), the brilliant and provocative essays that established National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh as one of the most important commentators on America’s class problem are collected in one searing and insightful volume. In Bone...

The making of a writer Ruskin Bond's first full-fledged autobiographical book covers his formative years,' till the age of twenty-one. The world of Anglo-India, with all its conflicting pulls, comes alive as he tells his story. His earliest memoirs are bitter-sweet, and relate to Jamnager where...

An Amazon Best Book of 2016 A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are). You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the...

Winner of the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, HAD I KNOWN contains the most provocative, incendiary, and career-making pieces by bestselling author, essayist, political activist, and "veteran muckraker" Barbara Ehrenreich (The New Yorker). A self-proclaimed "myth...

Sayed Kashua has been praised by The New York Times as "a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society". An Arab-Israeli who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing with the hope of creating one story that both Palestinians and Israelis could relate to, rather than two that cannot coexist together. He devoted his novels and his satirical weekly column published in Haaretz to telling the Palestinian story.

The story of four billion years of life on EarthLooking forward to a book that explains life? Well, here it is! Explaining Life Through Evolution opens a window to the four billion year history of the millions of species we see on this planet. This book does not simply narrate the story of...

Featuring a brand new introduction by the author on how he willingly gave up his birthright as the heir apparent to a multi-million dollar commercial construction firm in order to pursue his writing passion, Pieces of Mind contains essays on topics as diverse as lost love, sex, divorce, coping with a child's severe depression, experiencing Carnival in Venice, to sharing a first beer with your teenage son. But every word is delivered under the umbrella of a full-time fiction writer and freelance journalist trying to make sense of the lush world that surrounds him.