Essays Social

Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands is an important record of one writer's intellectual and personal odyssey. The 70 essays collected here, written over the last 10 years, cover an astonishing range of subjects.

In these writings, Gibran offers verses and lyric prose that possess all the grandeur of rich music. Here are the great truths and heartening joys drawn from the tears and sufferings of man. Each work sparkles with simile and symbolism, from “Seven Reprimands”, containing wise rules to live by, to “The Sayings of the Brook”, about the secrets to beauty, wealth, and virtue. These are profound exaltations of a great soul, and a trove of wisdom as relevant today as when it was first written.

La Rue de l’Insomnie est une déclaration d’indépendance d’une conscience humaine en révolte contre « l’enfer perpétuel » des spectacles de la déraison, marque déposée de cette époque qui est la nôtre. En posant un regard subversif sur des questions classiques relevant du dogme, l’auteur—ancien rédacteur en chef télé de la BBC—entraîne le lecteur dans un refus de se fondre dans le moule du tribalisme identitaire, lui préconisant de faire valoir son droit à penser le monde en humain libre, guidé par la seule soif de vérité.

It is on the knife’s edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession’s racial biases, considering the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his writing mentor James Alan McPherson, or attempting to break free of personal and societal stereotypes, Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique. The result is a bracing and often humorous examination by one of America’s most acclaimed essayists of what it is to grow, parent, write, and exist as a Black American male.

The JDC at 100: A Century of Humanitarianism traces the history of the JDC - an organization founded to aid victims of World War I that has played a significant role in preserving and sustaining Jewish life across the globe.

A welcome surprise: more than 50 prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America's most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary - appearing in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere - have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades.

Martin Luther King Jr. may be America's most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. But despite his stature, the significance of King's writings and political thought remains underappreciated. In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry state that the marginalization of King's ideas reflects a romantic consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative - an effort not at radical reform but at "living up to" enduring ideals laid down by the nation's founders.

Michel de Montaigne, one of the foremost writers of the French Renaissance and the originator of the genre of the essay, wrote on subjects ranging from friendship to imagination, from language to conscience. This collection includes 22 of Montaigne's essays, including "Of Prognostications," "Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes," "Of Pedantry," and "Of Friendship."

Award-winning journalist J. Malcolm Garcia's essays highlight the struggle, survival, and endurance of average people affected by the injustices of America's remorseless mammoth institutions and public indifference. They include families and small businesses still recovering from the BP oil spill; the man sentenced to life in prison for transporting drugs to save his son's life; the widows of soldiers who died, not in war, but from toxic fumes at their bases; and the Iraqi interpreter who was promised American asylum, only to arrive and be forced to live in poverty.

The Challenge of Things joins earlier collections like The Reason of Things and Thinking of Answers but this time to collect Grayling's recent writings on the world in a time of war and conflict. In describing and exposing the dark side of things, he also explores ways out of the habits and prejudices of mind that would otherwise trap us forever in the deadly impasses of conflicts of all kinds.

This year has seen unprecedented scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain. But what about in Australia, where he owns 70 per cent of the press? In Bad News, Robert Manne investigates Murdoch’s lead political voice here, the Australian newspaper, and how it shapes debate. Since 2002, under the editorship of Chris Mitchell, the Australian has come to see itself as judge, jury and would-be executioner of leaders and policies. Is this a dangerous case of power without responsibility?

"Was ist das Wesen des Lachens? Was steckt hinter dem Lächerlichen? Was haben die Grimasse eines Clowns, ein Wortspiel, eine Verwechslung in einem Schwank, eine geistvolle Lustspielszene miteinander gemeinsam?" Der französische Philosoph und Literaturnobelpreisträger (1927) Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941) ging dieser Frage in seinem Essay Le Rire (Das Lachen) aus dem Jahr 1900 nach. Das Werk ist nicht nur eine Theorie des Komischen, sondern auch gleichzeitig eine Hommage an künstlerische Kreativität.

In The Practice of Folklore: Essays Toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive “praxic” perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior.

Paula Deitz has delighted readers for more than 30 years with her vivid descriptions of both famous and hidden landscapes. Her writings allow readers and listeners to share in the experience of her extensive travels, from the waterways of Britain's Castle Howard to the Japanese gardens of Kyoto, and home again to New York City's Central Park.

Even as our world has suffered through successive upheavals, Jesse McCarthy contends, "something was happening in the world of culture: a surging and unprecedented visibility at every level of Black art making". Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? reckons with this resurgence, arguing for the central role of art and intellectual culture in an age of widening inequality and moral crisis. McCarthy reinvigorates the essay form as a space not only for argument but for experimental writing that mixes and chops the old ways into new ones.

Why do superheroes choose to be superheroes? Where does Spider-Man's altruism come from, and what does it mean? Why is there so much prejudice against the X-Men, and how could they have responded to it, other than the way they did? Why are super-villains so aggressive? The Psychology of Superheroes answers these questions in a wide range of essays on topics from Aquaman to Arkham Asylum - exploring the inner workings our heroes usually only share with their therapists.

Spanning politics and art, music and baseball, Cuba on the Verge is a timely look at a society’s profound transformation—from inside and out. Change looms in Cuba. Just ninety miles from United States shores yet inaccessible to most Americans until recently, Cuba fascinates as much as it...

Sie schrieb einen emotionalen Brief an Bundeskanzlerin Merkel, der durch die Medien ging. Über eine Million Menschen sahen ihre Botschaft auf YouTube. Spätestens seit ihrer Teilnahme an der ZDF-Sendung "Wie geht's Deutschland" wurde sie einem breiten Publikum bekannt. Die Rede ist von Petra Paulsen. Als eine unübersehbare Zahl von Menschen aus dem Nahen Osten und Nordafrika im Herbst 2015 plötzlich unkontrolliert nach Deutschland strömte, stellte sich die Gymnasiallehrerin die Frage "Was ist hier bloß los?".

Does it take faith to be a Jedi? Are droids capable of thought? Should Jar Jar Binks be held responsible for the rise of the Empire? Presenting entirely new essays, no aspect of the myth and magic of George Lucas's creation is left philosophically unexamined in The Ultimate Star Wars and Philosophy.

Ian F. Svenonius’s new collection of sixteen essays and stories, entitled Censorship Now!!, is reorganizing people’s ideas about censorship, Ikea, documentary film-making, the Berlin Wall, the film Heathers, the twist, the frug, the mashed potato, shaving one’s body, Apple, Inc., Nordic functionalism, the supposed benevolence of the Wikipedia, hoarding, college rock, the origins of the Internet, and more. It’s an underground smash which has been met with horrified gasps in all respectable quarters and gog-eyed enthusiasm in artist garrets the world over.