"Enthralling essays on the expatriate experience in Paris and shrewd literary criticism by one of the twentieth century's finest writers. Mavis Gallant is revered as one of the finest short story writers of her generation, but she was also an astute observer and formidable reporter. This selection of Gallant's essays and reviews written between 1968 and 1985 begins with her impressions of the Parisian student uprising in May 1968-originally published...

"Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) is, of course, best known as the author of Little Women (1868). But she was also a noted essayist who wrote on a wide range of subjects, including her father's failed utopian commune, the benefits of an unmarried life, and her experience as a young woman sent to work in service to alleviate her family's poverty. Her first literary success was a contemporary close-up account of the American Civil War, brilliantly depicted...

"For acclaimed writer and environmental activist Rick Bass, it can be wearying to dwell relentlessly upon the broken, the fragmented, the dead and dying and doomed to extinction. Activism is a necessary part of the environmental movement, but so is the time-honored celebration of the beauty that inspires us. Spanning his storied career, these new and selected essays attempt to take a brief step to the side, away from lamentation and prescription,...

"On Work gathers a selection of Derek Thompson's most popular and significant writing on work, life, and the future of jobs. From essays on how mass automation could change society to his widely read treatise on 'workism' as our modern religion, Thompson's analysis and forecasts have become fixtures of the twenty-first century conversation about work"--Back cover.

The power of quiet can haunt us over generations, crystallizing in pain that Jen Soriano views as a form of embodied history. In this searing memoir in essays, Soriano, the daughter of a neurosurgeon, journeys to understand the origins of her chronic pain and mental health struggles. By the end, she finds both the source and the delta of what bodies impacted by trauma might need to thrive. In fourteen essays connected by theme and experience, Soriano...

Looking back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, and reflecting on projects he never got around to - people to profile, regions he meant to portray, a literary legend presents a collection of vignettes and a "reminiscent montage" from a writing life.

"In this poignant, timely collection, the renowned Booker Prize-winning author evokes the magic of nature and the urgency of protecting our environment. Twenty thousand years after a catastrophe wiped out the human race, visitors uncover their final messages scattered across the planet, in flooded cities and disintegrating books. These writings reveal the tragedies of people who continued to live as they always did-fearfully, selfishly-even as the...

In these deeply researched essays, a Paris Review contributor blends science, history, and memoir to explore human obsession with gorgeous things, exposing the fraught histories of makeup, silk, jewels, perfume, and other objects, helping readers to ethically partake in the beauty of the world around them. Kelleher has spent much of her life chasing beauty. She can to see that whenever you find something unbearably beautiful, if you look closer,...

"Renowned internationally for her lyrically unsettling novels, PEN/Faulkner Award winner Chloe Aridjis now offers readers her first collection of shorter works, with an introduction by Tom McCarthy. Chloe Aridjis's stories and essays are known to transport readers into liminal, often dreamlike, realms. In this collection of works, we meet a woman guided only by a plastic bag drifting through the streets of Berlin who discovers a nonsense-named bar...

"It doesn't take long after learning to speak for children to utter the cry, "That's not fair!" That familiar exclamation seems to emerge from a primal human sense: you know how you deserve to be treated, and you know that you have not been treated that way-you've been given a raw deal, you've not been done right by. In this volume for our Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, Robert Kaster explores how we treat others at the everyday, person-to-person...