The Oxford Book Of Essays

The essay is one of the richest of literary forms. Its most obvious characteristics are freedom, informality, and the personal touch--though it can also find room for poetry, satire, fantasy, and sustained argument. All these qualities, and many others, are on display in The Oxford Book of Essays. The most wide-ranging collection of its kind to appear for many years, it includes 140 essays by 120 writers: classics, curiosities, meditations, diversions, old favorites, recent examples that deserve to be better known. A particularly welcome feature is the amount of space allotted to American essayists, from Benjamin Franklin to John Updike and beyond. This is an anthology that opens with wise words about the nature of truth, and closes with a consideration of the novels of Judith Krantz. Some of the other topics discussed in its pages are anger, pleasure, Gandhi, Beau Brummell, wasps, party-going, gangsters, plumbers, Beethoven, potato crisps, the importance of being the right size, and the demolition of Westminster Abbey. It contains some of the most eloquent writing in English, and some of the most entertaining.

An intriguing collection of more than 70 Latin American essays, some never before translated into English, gives us the whole spectrum of concerns that have animated some of the greatest writers of our time--from Andres Bello, Pablo Neruda, and Alfonso Reyes to Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Rosario Ferre--an assembly confident, ingenious, aware.

Selected and introduced by Richard Dawkins, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a celebration of the finest writing by scientists for a wider audience - revealing that many of the best scientists have displayed as much imagination and skill with the pen as they have in the laboratory.This is a rich and vibrant collection that captures the poetry and excitement of communicating scientific understanding and scientific effort from 1900 to the present day. Professor Dawkins has included writing from a diverse range of scientists, some of whom need no introduction, and some of whoseworks have become modern classics, while others may be less familiar - but all convey the passion of great scientists writing about their science.

This collection of 140 essays by 120 writers features classics, curiosities, meditations, diversions, old favorites, and recent examples.

"Fifty Essays" is a collection of 50 essays by George Orwell. Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Included in this collection: - The Spike (1931) - A Hanging (1931) - Bookshop Memories (1936) - Shooting an Elephant (1936) - Down the Mine (1937) - North and South (1937) - Spilling the Spanish Beans (1937) - Marrakech (1939) - Boys' Weeklies and Frank Richards's Reply (1940) - Charles Dickens (1940) - Charles Reade (1940) - Inside the Whale (1940) - The Art of Donald McGill (1941) - The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941) - Wells, Hitler and the World State (1941) - Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942) - Rudyard Kipling (1942) - Mark Twain—The Licensed Jester (1943) - Poetry and the Microphone (1943) - W B Yeats (1943) - Arthur Koestler (1944) - Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali (1944) - Raffles and Miss Blandish (1944) - Antisemitism in Britain (1945) - Freedom of the Park (1945) - Future of a Ruined Germany (1945) - Good Bad Books (1945) - In Defence Of P. G. Wodehouse (1945) - Nonsense Poetry (1945) - Notes on Nationalism (1945) - Revenge is Sour (1945) - The Sporting Spirit (1945) - You and the Atomic Bomb (1945) - A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray (1946) - A Nice Cup of Tea (1946) - Books vs. Cigarettes (1946) - Confessions of a Book Reviewer (1946) - Decline of the English Murder (1946) - How the Poor Die (1946) - James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution (1946) - Pleasure Spots (1946) - Politics and the English Language (1946) - Politics vs. Literature: an Examination of Gulliver's Travels (1946) - Riding Down from Bangor (1946) - Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (1946) - The Prevention of Literature (1946) - Why I Write (1946) - Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool (1947) - Such, Such were the Joys (1947) - Writers and Leviathan (1948) - Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

The sexual politics of a faculty wives dinner. The psychological gamesmanship of an inappropriate therapist. The emotional minefield of an extended family wedding . . . Whatever the subject, Emily Fox Gordon’s disarmingly personal essays are an art form unto themselves—reflecting and revealing, like mirrors in a maze, the seemingly endless ways a woman can lose herself in the modern world. With piercing humor and merciless precision, Gordon zigzags her way through “the unevolved paradise” of academia, with its dying breeds of bohemians, adulterers, and flirts, then stumbles through the perils and pleasures of psychotherapy, hoping to find a narrative for her life. Along the way, she encounters textbook feminists, partying philosophers, perfectionist moms, and an unlikely kinship with Kafka—in a brilliant collection of essays that challenge our sacred institutions, defy our expectations, and define our lives.

Stoic philosopher and tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote moral essays - exercises in practical philosophy - on how to live in a troubled world. Strikingly applicable today, his thoughts on happiness and other subjects are here combined in a clear, modern translation with an introduction on Seneca's life and philosophy.