Essays

What does it mean to feel truly alive? Aged 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living....

A deeply moving and insightful collection of personal essays from number-one best-selling author John Green, adapted from his critically acclaimed podcast....

One of America's greatest living literary legends invites you think for yourself in this compelling narrative of manipulation, power, and the human condition.

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question....

The collection of 10 absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter....

Echoing Socrates' statement that the unexamined life not worth living, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz draws on his twenty-five years of work and more than 50,000 hours of conversations to form a collection of beautifully rendered tales that illuminate the human experience....

Known as the ‘four horsemen’ of New Atheism, these four big thinkers of the 21st century met only once. Their electrifying examination of ideas on this remarkable occasion was intense and wide-ranging....

David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all....

An irresistible collection of essays and memoir from the internationally best-selling, Women’s Prize-winning author of The Dutch House....

Following the 2014 Gaza War and decades of oppression and resistance, storytelling platform We Are Not Numbers (WANN) was founded to give a voice to the youth of Gaza.

You'll be wincing in recognition and scratching your head in incredulity, but like Marian herself you won't be able to stop laughing at the sheer delightful absurdity that is modern life....

In this inspiring masterpiece, best-selling author Susan Cain shows the power of 'bittersweetness'—a tendency towards sorrow and longing, an acute awareness of passing time and a piercing joy when beholding beauty....

From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a literary masterclass on how to become both a better writer and reader, on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about how to live....

Many think that Marian leads a glitzy life of limos, television, and showbiz parties - but she would argue that she spends the majority of her life writing alone, wearing her PJs....

In Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality.

Picking up where Things I Don't Want to Know left off, this short, exhilarating memoir shows a writer in radical flux, facing separation and bereavement and emerging renewed from the ashes of a former life....

Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy's Living Autobiography is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it....

What could be a more tempting Christmas gift than a compendium of David Sedaris' best stories, selected by the author himself? From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and are now for the first time collected in one volume....

Originally published in 1966, Susan Sontag's first collection of essays is a modern classic and includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation", as well as, her impassioned discussions....

For over 40 years, Christopher Hitchens has proclaimed truth where others have spun falsehood and written, with passionate commitment, on matters that others fear to broach. This volume of essays encompasses Hitchens's writing over the past decade on politics, literature and religion....

Oliver Sacks examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people....

In today's challenging and busy world, don't you wish you knew how to quiet your mind and focus on yourself? In On Meditation, renowned spiritual leader, Sri M, answers all your questions on the practice and benefits of meditation....

Filled with his usual obsessions - sex, booze, gambling - More features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature and his tortured, violent relationships with women....

In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers....

The great insights of the Stoics are spread over a wide range of ancient sources. This book brings them all together for the first time. It systematically presents what the various Stoic philosophers said on every important topic, accompanied by an eloquent commentary that is clear and concise....

“There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.” There is no good way to say this—because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, “a single point in a timeline.” Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James.

"Government, like Circe, turns men into swine," David Mamet writes in his latest political tour de force. Prepare to be challenged, enlightened, and entertained by The Disenlightenment as Mamet dissects the modern world with enthusiasm, wisdom, and lots of references to movies about the mafia. Once a stalwart of liberal thought, Mamet now turns his penetrating gaze on the cultural milieu that nurtured his artistic growth, revealing how America's elites have twisted our institutions into tools of manipulation.

The sport of surfing has a mystique and allure that has transformed many of these icons into mythical figures. Surfer Stories brings them together in one definitive collection that will appeal to those who surf and those who don’t!

Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year at an Irish university and was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. Inspired by the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, Tóibín found a writer who would be a lifelong companion and exemplar.

ゴミカスみたいなおのれを命懸けで書いてきた。町田康の文体に宿るその精神と技巧。はじめての告白「お互い、ええ文章書こうで！」

Un retrato perspicaz y atrevido de la masculinidad contemporánea. Cualquier feminista que haya dialogado ante el público sobre las frustraciones y los lastres innatos a la aventura de ser mujer habrá tenido que enfrentarse alguna vez a la pregunta: «¿Y los hombres qué?». Y si la feminista en cuestión lleva años intentando convencer a ese público de que las preocupaciones de ambos sexos son cosas muy distintas, su respuesta automática, muy probablemente, habrá sido algo como: «¿Por qué me sacan este tema? ¡Yo soy feminista! ¡Mi especialidad son las mujeres! No me ocupo de… los otros».

Viviendo en los límites de nuestra percepción ordinaria, los musgos son un elemento común del mundo natural, que sin embargo suele pasar desapercibido. Reserva de musgo es una fascinante mezcla de ciencia y reflexión personal que invita a los lectores a explorar y aprender de la vida elegante y sencilla de los musgos.

A critic explores the paradox of finding community in “the dozens” while grieving. A violent town ritual causes an all-too-familiar moral panic. An email thread between friends on why we need an updated Green Book but for public toilets. All across the nation, “Karens” become illegal overnight. These are just a few of the hilarious worlds contained in Damon Young’s groundbreaking anthology featuring the best, funniest, and Blackest essays, short stories, letters, and rants.

A deeply insightful take on how hate and insecurity can be intertwined, and an endearing love letter to the natural world, ‘On the Purpose of Hating’ is one of the most renowned essays from the brilliant mind of William Hazlitt. In ‘On the Purpose of Hating’, Hazlitt explores the complexities of hatred. He compellingly argues that hatred can have a self-destructive edge, and can do just as much harm to the person who harbours it as the subject of it. At its heart, hatred is merely a coping mechanism to manage our own shortcomings.

Desde mediados del siglo XX, la esperanza de vida ha aumentado en occidente de veinte a treinta años, lo que equivale a toda una existencia en el siglo XVII. Así pues, al llegar a los cincuenta años, experimentamos una suerte de suspensión entre la madurez y la vejez, un intervalo en el que la brevedad de la vida realmente comienza, mientras nos planteamos las grandes cuestiones de nuestra condición.