Showing titles in Essays

Brought to you by Penguin. **SUNDAY TIMES BESTELLER** This book is about learning to live. 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...

High heels, movie deals, wagon wheels, shoes, reviews, having the blues, builders, babies, families and other calamities... 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, and eating bananas with a laptop on a pillow in front of her. Under the Duvet is a wide collection of her journalism and stories, all personal, closely observed, and painfully funny...

Essays on London provide an acute and perceptive insight into early twentieth century city life. Including profound meditations on the rhythm of life on Oxford Street and the consumerism that drives it, vivid descriptions of the epic cathedrals that pave the streets and the place of religion in contemporary society, and an intimate sketch of a charming woman who is a Londoner to her core, these eloquent snapshots of the city are told with Woolf’s trademark intimacy and self-awareness.

Dismissed by a bored author at a book signing, a betrayed young man named David Sedaris made a vow. Someday, when it was his turn at the table, he’d connect with his readers. The experience has been even more revealing than he’d hoped.In this hilarious and perceptive essay, the celebrated humorist reflects on the unusual patterns of forced socialization between author and audience, and the obligations and sometimes surprising returns of not-so-chance encounters with strangers: jokes, secrets, insights, and even charity.

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. In recounting his patients' dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too-human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist.

In the 1960s and early '70s, the most prominent, vocal cultural movement was the New Left: a movement that condemned America and everything it stood for: individualism, material wealth, science, technology, capitalism.

Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are young, attractive but impoverished New Yorkers. They are in love and decide to marry, but realise their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth and society that their more privileged friends take for granted. Nick and Susy agree to separate when either encounters a more eligible proposition.

From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos - in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.

In this powerful and wide-ranging collection of essays, Rebecca Solnit turns her attention to the war at home. This is a war, she says, "[W]ith so many casualties that we should call it by its true name, this war with so many dead by police, by violent ex-husbands and partners and lovers, by people pursuing power and profit at the point of a gun or just shooting first and figuring out who they hit later."

One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Boston Globe, and Entertainment Weekly A sharp-eyed, uniquely humane tour of America's cultural landscape―from high to low to lower than low―by the award-winning young star of...

A wide-ranging selection of George Orwell's essays, written in the clear-eyed, passionate and uncompromising style that has earned him a reputation as one of Britain's greatest writers.

In 1892, Gertrude Bell visited Persia (now Iran) shortly after the appointment of her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, as British minister in Tehran. Three years later came Persian Pictures, Gertrude Bell’s first written work, which presents a series of vivid sketches of Persian culture and society at the time. Bell explores various cities and landscapes, and encounters local characters along the way, providing a unique perspective on Persian life and customs.

Abridged for audio. Read by the author, Clive James. With fascinating essays on towering figures from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, Cultural Amnesia is one of the crowning achievements in Clive James's illustrious career as a critic...

Read by the author, this is Louis Theroux's hilarious and thought-provoking journey through weird America. For 10 years, Louis Theroux has been making programmes about off-beat characters on the fringes of US society. Now he revisits America and the people who have most fascinated him to try to...

“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)

Darin versucht Orwell ein Gesellschaftsmodell zu skizzieren, das es selbst als „demokratischen Sozialismus" bezeichnet, in welchem Schablonendenken innerhalb der überholten Links-Rechts-Symbolik keine Rolle mehr spielt und jeder Bürger unabhängig von Begleitumständen seiner Geburt die gleichen Chancen und Bildungsmöglichkeiten erhält. Dieser wünschenswerte Zustand soll laut Orwell durch eine teilweise Verstaatlichung gewisser Wirtschaftsbereiche und eine Begrenzung der Menge an privatem Besitzeigentum umgesetzt werden.

Einen großen Teil seiner prosaischen Werke bilden seine Essays ab, hier Teil 13. Dabei stehen Comics und deren Humor im Vordergrund, wobei ein großer Bogen vom Postkartenwitz, gekennzeichnet durch Brüller und Kalauer, welche die Monotonie der staatlich geförderten Lebensart in Form einer anscheinend anständigen Fassade durch den Kakao ziehen, zum etwas tiefsinnigeren Humor von Literaturklassikern geschlagen wird. Gewissermaßen vom Witz des Pöbels zu dem des Bildungsbürgertums, aber nun ja, über Humor lässt sich bekanntlich nicht streiten – oder doch?

‘Our greatest living satirist’ Sunday Times ‘The most screamingly funny living writer’ Mail on Sunday From the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four, a selection of Craig Brown's finest writing collected together for the first time. Haywire presents...

The final and most personal work from Pulitzer Prize - winning author and historian Will Durant - discovered 32 years after his death - is a message of insight for everyone who has sought meaning in life or the council of a wise friend in navigating life's journey. From 1968 to 1978, Will Durant made four public allusions to the existence of Fallen Leaves. One, in 1975, hinted at its contents: "a not very serious book that answers the questions of what I think about government, life, death, and God."

There is no more dramatic scene in literary history than the stormy night by Lake Geneva when Byron, Claire Clairmont, Polidori and the Shelleys met to talk of horror and the unexplained. From that emerged Frankenstein, a monster who has haunted imaginations for 200 years. Miranda Seymour illustrates the rich and unexplored life of Mary Shelley. Everything from her childhood to her tempestuous relationship with Percy Shelley; Seymour brings to life the brilliant mind that created Frankenstein through unexplored and intriguing sources.