History Essays

The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of nineteenth-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying...

An exploration into the curation of the self in Western civilization from Da Vinci to Kim Kardashian. In a technologically-saturated era where nearly everything can be effortlessly and digitally reproduced, we're all hungry to carve out our own unique personalities, our own bespoke personae, to...

The place is El Salvador in 1982, at the ghastly height of its civil war. The writer is Joan Didion, who delivers an anatomy of that country's particular brand of terror - its mechanisms, rationales, and intimate relation to United States foreign policy. As ash travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, and considers the distinctly Salvadoran grammar of the verb "to disappear," Didion gives us a book that is germane to any country in which bloodshed has become a standard tool of politics.

From Canada's newspaper of record for 180 years, here are thirty-one brilliant and provocative essays by a diverse selection of their writers on how The Globe and Mail covered and influenced major events and issues from the paper’s founding to the latest file. Since 1844, the Globe and Mail...

If your funny older sister were the former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, her behind-the-scenes political memoir would look something like this . . . Alyssa Mastromonaco worked for Barack Obama for almost a decade, and long before his run for president. From the then-senator's...

America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction. In this valedictory volume, Yale...

"With easygoing authority... [Fridland] offers context, and a welcoming spirit, to the many contentious realignments in our language."—The Wall Street Journal “Smart and funny—I loved it!" —Mignon Fogarty, author of New York Times bestseller Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for...

A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that...

Adrienne Rich's influential and landmark investigation concerns both the experience and the institution of motherhood. The experience is her own—as a woman, a poet, a feminist, and a mother—but it is an experience determined by the institution, imposed on all women everywhere. She draws on...

The internationally bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees shows how we can decipher nature's secret signs by studying the weather. The internationally bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees shows how we can decipher nature's secret signs by studying the weather. In this...

In the 2,000 years that have elapsed since the time of Christ, Christians have been as much divided by their faith as united, as much at odds as in communion. And the contents of Christian confession have developed with astonishing energy. How can believers claim a faith that has been passed down through the ages while recognizing the real historical contingencies that have shaped both their doctrines and their divisions? In this carefully argued essay, David Bentley Hart critiques the concept of "tradition" that has become dominant in Christian thought as fundamentally incoherent.

An inside look at the Seattle Seahawks—newly updated! From the hilarious to the surreal, from inside the huddle to inside the broadcast booth, twenty-eight-year Seattle Seahawks veteran Steve Raible takes fans to places they never knew existed. In this newly revised edition of Tales from the Seattle Seahawks Sideline, fans are offered an inside look at life in the locker room and on the sidelines of one of the NFL’s most beloved franchises.

Famines are becoming smaller and rarer, but optimism about the possibility of a famine-free future must be tempered by the threat of global warming. That is just one of the arguments that Cormac Ó Gráda, one of the world's leading authorities on the history and economics of famine, develops in this wide-ranging audiobook, which provides crucial new perspectives on key questions raised by famines around the globe between the 17th and 21st centuries.

Sontag's most important critical writings from 1972 to 1980 are collected in Under the Sign of Saturn. One of America's leading essayists, Sontag's writings are commentaries on the relation between moral and aesthetic ideas, discussing the works of Antonin Artaud, Leni Riefenstahl, Elias Canetti, Walter Benjamin, and others. The collection includes a variety of her well-known essays. Sontag's writings are famously full of intellectual range and depth, and are at turns exhilarating, ominous, disturbing, and beautiful.

This New York Times bestseller intimately depicts urban life in a gripping book that slips behind cold statistics and sensationalism to reveal the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour. One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century In her extraordinary...

Riveting, elegant, and humorous, New York Times bestseller Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. Following a run of new year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz...

Now in audiobook for the first time ever! Read by Simon Jones, the original “Arthur Dent,” and written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, Don’t Panic is the definitive chronicle of all things Hitchhiker! First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t...

“A beautifully written, immaculately researched meditation on the impact of the Prophet Muhammad on the modern world. I loved this book!” —Reza Aslan, author of No God but God and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth A six-year-old cries in his mother’s arms as she draws her...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER · THE SPIRITUAL CLASSIC THAT HAS INFLUENCED MORE THAN 500,000 READERS ""A deep, uncompromising story about human and divine love.” — Los Angeles Times The profoundly moving and heart-rendering classic for anyone who has experienced the depths of love and loss...

Mit den Erinnerungen eines Europäers hat Stefan Zweig seine persönliche, zugleich eine der besten Analysen der Jahrzehnte zwischen dem ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert und dem 2. Weltkrieg verfasst.