History Essays

Tom Kelly, the legendary signature voice of USC sports for nearly five decades, combines with co-author Tom Hoffarth of the Daily News of Los Angeles to take Trojan fans on a journey of memories and previously untold anecdotes from and about many of the great coaches, players, teams, and games in USC football history, as well as other sports. His story in Southern California starts with the recommendation of Jack Buck that he be hired as Chick Hearn’s color man on USC football and basketball games in 1961.

These are essays on medieval history, and the crusades especially, written from what can broadly be considered a Marxist approach.

What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza's Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it.

A new rip-roaring essay collection from the smart, edgy, hilarious, unabashedly raunchy, and bestselling Samantha Irby. Irby is forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a...

One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Boston Globe, and Entertainment Weekly A sharp-eyed, uniquely humane tour of America's cultural landscape―from high to low to lower than low―by the award-winning young star of...

Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Food dominates our every waking minute: Hype restaurants. Allrecipes. The Great British Bake Off. In this dazzling cultural history, bestselling food writer Ruby Tandoh (author of Cook As You Are) traces how—and why—we’ve all become foodies. “Ruby Tandoh is...

The Black Swan is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects...

Gare Joyce, a sportswriter with the soul of poet and a penchant for trouble, has penned a tell-all memoir that is laugh-out-loud hilarious, savage—and tender at the quick. The media has their stock narratives, but Joyce tells the undiluted, unfiltered truth about the stars and also about his fellow messengers up in the press box.

A distinctive collection of essays capturing Lawrence Freedman's insightful analysis across war, strategy, and foreign policy and providing a unique view of the key thinkers that shaped history.

Written between A.D. 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book which is vital to the understanding of modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, which had occurred just three years earlier. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, the book had taken on a larger theme.

Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker “Excellent and timely.” —The New Yorker “Informative, insightful and provocative, On Antisemitism couldn’t be more timely.” —The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “An immense contribution. . . . In tracing the evolving meaning of ‘antisemitism...

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America unites centuries of essential American voices to understand our national debates and divisions from 1619 to the present, with his signature commentary on the consequential speeches, letters, and essays that led us to this moment...

The first-ever Black history to center queer voices, this landmark study traces the lives of LGBTQ+ Black Americans from slavery to present day Gender and sexual expression have always been part of the Black freedom struggle In this latest book in Beacon’s award-winning ReVisioning History...

Part of John Muir's appeal to modern audiences is that he not only explored the American West and wrote about its beauties but also fought for their preservation. His successes dot the landscape and are evident in all the natural features that bear his name: forests, lakes, trails, and glaciers. Here collected are some of Muir's finest wilderness essays, ranging in subject matter from Alaska to Yellowstone, from Oregon to the High Sierra.

The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the ten years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon...

An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want Kathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal...

From New York Times bestselling author Ross Gay comes an intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection. “Brilliant. Inciting Joy is a book that will break your heart.” —Ada Limón, US poet laureate “A gift that’s meant to be shared.” —The...

An instant New York Times bestseller! “Informative, endlessly entertaining.”—BuzzFeed “Generation X’s definitive chronicler of culture.”—GQ From the author of But What If We’re Wrong comes an insightful, funny reckoning with a pivotal decade It was long ago, but not as long as it...