""Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores "what it means to be seen, to find someone...

"A comprehensive collection of writings by "the most influential writer of the nineteenth century" (Harold Bloom) Ralph Waldo Emerson's diverse body of work has done more than perhaps any other thinker to shape and define the American mind. Literary giants including Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman were among Emerson's admirers and proteges, while his central text, Nature, singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and...

Presents a collection of short stories dealing with the complexities and contradictions of everyday life in Germany prior to World War II.

Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades. The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer...

In this personal exploration of feminism, sexuality and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment, the acclaimed model and actress presents essays that chronicle moments of her life while investigating culture's fetishization of girls and female beauty.

AN NYRB CLASSICS ORIGINAL
 
Virginia Woolf called Max Beerbohm “the prince” of essayists, F. W. Dupee praised his “whim of iron” and “cleverness amounting to genius,” while Beerbohm himself noted that “only the insane take themselves quite seriously.” From his precocious debut as a dandy in 1890s Oxford until he put his pen aside in the aftermath of World War II, Beerbohm was recognized...

"As we approach the centenary of [Jackson's] birth comes this ... compilation of fifty-six pieces--more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson's children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mothers paper's at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion"--

"A fiercely funny collection of essays on marriage and manners, thank you notes and three-ways, ghosts, gunshots, gynecology, and the Calgon-scented, onion-dipped, monogrammed art of living as a Southern Lady" -- Ellis may have left her home in Alabama, married a New Yorker, forgotten how to drive, and abandoned the puffy headbands of her youth, but she clings to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread. In this collection of essays, Ellis...