English Writing

These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn't working for anyone, even those who appear to have it all. What is going on? In this urgent cultural diagnosis, author and activist Astra Taylor exposes how seemingly disparate crises—rising inequality and declining mental health, the ecological emergency, and the threat of authoritarianism—originate from a social order built on insecurity.

Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned 30, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be. To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. She got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world, all alone. This is the absorbing chronicle of that year.

Lydia Maria Child grew up in the 1800s reading countless books. She defied the idea that girls weren't supposed to fill their minds with ideas and stories. They weren't supposed to write their own books, either, but that is exactly what Lydia Maria did. Although she gained remarkable success as a writer for children and adults, she sacrificed everything when she took up her pen against slavery. Lydia Maria believed that slavery was wrong—and she wasn't afraid to say so. As a result, her courageous words changed her life and helped change the course of American history.

You can now learn all the secrets on how to write beautiful music with this carefully designed guide to songwriting! The audiobook is packed with methods, ideas, and advice on how to improve your skills and unleash your talent for unique results! Learn everything from chords, notes, and keys to lyrics and rhythm, adopt the habits and mentality of successful songwriters, and become the best! With this guide, you will also learn all the practical details you need to know about copyrights, piracy, and royalties so you can finally become a true professional!

Over a decade ago, when Writing Down the Bones first appeared, Natalie Goldberg started a revolution in the way we practice writing. Now, for the first time, Goldberg reads her classic work, while offering new commentary about the creative, spiritual, and practical dimensions of writing. This collector's edition also includes an exclusive interview with the author.

You are invited to embark on a sacred writing journey. Along the way, author Beth Kempton will teach you how to free your mind so your body can create, transform your relationship to fear, write anytime, anywhere, and share your words with confidence. Being a fearless writer has little to do with validation and accolades. Rather it is about ritual, commitment, developing an acute awareness of beauty, dancing with inspiration, listening to the world outside yourself and going deep within. The Way of the Fearless Writer is your guide to this creative, transformational journey.

Writing fact-based nonfiction for large general audiences requires two different skills: the ability to conduct rigorous research and to craft engaging prose. Tilar J. Mazzeo is one of the few people with extensive experience in both arenas, as a tenured academic and a New York Times best-selling author whose books have been made into a major motion picture and translated into more than 15 languages. She is also a sought-after writing coach with a passion for helping others communicate their expertise more broadly.

"Mind Over Muscle: Writings from the Founder of Judo" by Jigoro Kano offers a profound exploration of the philosophy, principles, and educational values behind Judo, one of Japan's most renowned martial arts. This collection of essays and lectures reveals Kano’s vision of Judo as a discipline that goes beyond physical techniques, promoting moral and intellectual development for personal and societal benefit.

As Random House’s copy chief, Dreyer has upheld the standards of the legendary publisher for more than two decades. He is beloved by authors and editors alike - not to mention his followers on social media - for deconstructing the English language with playful erudition. Now, he distills everything he has learned from the myriad books he has copyedited and overseen into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best prose foot forward.

When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war.

Step inside this captivating account of Paulo Coehlo's pilgrimage along the road to Santiago. This fascinating parable explores the need to find one's own path. In the end, we discover that the extraordinary is always found in the ordinary and simple ways of everyday people. Part adventure story, part guide to self-discovery, this compelling tale delivers the perfect combination of enchantment and insight.

At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions.” It’s not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, “to distinguish matters of consequence from matters of inconsequence.” He leaves it to his listeners to do the final sort of which is which.

Draft No. 4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. McPhee offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny.

Wherever Chelsea Handler travels, one thing is certain: she always ends up in the land of the ridiculous. Now, in this uproarious collection, she sneaks her sharp wit through airport security and delivers her most absurd and hilarious stories ever.

Knowing your audience will help you to organize your material so that it has the best chance of being read and understood. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes - listen, and you will be better received. This book will show you how to write business messages clearly, concisely and simply. It will encourage you to write conversationally, the way you talk, and to write with humanity; that is, from one person to another.

Dear Bob and Sue is the story of our (Matt and Karen Smith's) journey to all 59 US National Parks. We wrote the book as a series of emails to our friends, Bob and Sue, in which we share our humorous and quirky observations. It is at times irreverent, unpredictable, and sarcastic, all in the spirit of humor. We describe a few of our experiences in each park but do not provide an exhaustive overview of each experience or park.

Amusing and informative, Hey Ranger! teaches as it entertains with tales of boat-ramp misadventures, lost Afghani campers, encounters with wild animals, dumb crooks, and more. One chapter, "Tales from the Wild Side", brings together unusual incidents from National Park Service reports, and the concluding essay, "Don't Be a Victim of Your Vacation", advises visitors on how to avoid being a story on the evening news.

With so many excellent writing guides lining bookstore shelves, it can be hard to know where to look for the best advice. Should you go with Natalie Goldberg or Anne Lamott? Maybe William Zinsser or Stephen King would be more appropriate. Then again, what about the classics - Strunk and White, or even Aristotle himself? In Murder Your Darlings, Roy Peter Clark, who has been a beloved and revered writing teacher to children and Pulitzer Prize winners alike for more than 30 years, has compiled a remarkable collection of more than 100 of the best writing tips.

In the Upanishads, illumined sages share flashes of insight, the results of their investigation into consciousness itself. In extraordinary visions, they experience directly a transcendent Reality which is the essence, or Self, of each created being. They teach that each of us, each Self, is eternal, deathless, one with the power that created the universe.

When Vera decides to travel to an old house in the New England countryside for a month-long escape from some devastating news about her daughter, Cassie, she has no idea her life is about to change forever. It begins innocently enough—peeling the old wallpaper from the walls as a favor to the house’s owner. What she discovers underneath—written in India ink on the very walls of the house by a woman named Beth, in 1919—is the beginning of the reader’s unsettling crossing into the unknown world underneath the paper.