From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, Crosley can do no right despite the best of intentions--or perhaps because of them. Together, these essays create a startlingly funny and revealing portrait of a complex and utterly recognizable character that's aiming for the stars but hits the ceiling, and the inimitable city that has helped shape who she...

"'In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.' So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which beloved poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of...

George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is comprised of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther...

A satirical look at modern culture. In Glen's Homophobia Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2, the author parodies the whining of minority groups, Diary of a Smoker tackles the persecution of smokers, and Santaland Diaries describes the author's experiences as a Macy's elf.

A winning collection of essays about home, love, cooking, politics, and the writing life from the acclaimed novelist.

A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, this collection of thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds reveals a provocative, talented writer at her most assured.

""Toward what goal do I aspire, ever, but collision? Always accident, concussion, bodies butting together . . . By collision I also mean metaphor and metonymy: operations of slide and slip and transfuse." In his new nonfiction collection, poet, artist, critic, novelist, and performer Wayne Koestenbaum enacts twenty-six ecstatic collisions between his mind and the world. A subway passenger's leather bracelet prompts musings on the German word for stranger;...

In 1965, John McPhee published his first book, "A Sense of Where You Are"; a decade later, he had published eleven others. This reader is comprised of selections from those first twelve books.