Essay Essays

Of a Happy Life is an essay written by Seneca around the year 58 AD. It was intended for his older brother Gallio, to whom Seneca also dedicated his dialogue entitled De Ira (On Anger). It is divided into 28 chapters that present the moral thoughts of Seneca at their most mature. Seneca explains that the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of reason - reason meant not only using logic, but also understanding the processes of nature.

By age twenty, at the height of the Jazz Age, Trudy Ederle was the most accomplished swimmer in the world. She’d won Olympic gold and set a host of world records. But the greatest challenge remained: the English Channel. Only a few swimmers, none of them women, had ever made the treacherous twenty-one mile crossing. Trudy’s failed first attempt seemed to confirm what many naysayers believed: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing. In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong.

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers. With the wry humor and wit that have become his trademark, John Gierach writes about his travels in search of good fishing and even better fish stories. In this new collection of essays on fishing - and hunting - Gierach discusses fishing for trout in Alaska, for salmon in Scotland, and for almost anything in Texas.

To be a bookseller or librarian… You have to play detective. Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. An advocate. A visionary. A person who creates “book joy” by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, “You’ve got to read this. You’re going to love it.” Step inside The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians and enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, find whatever you want or require. This place has the magic of rainbows and unicorns, but it's also a business. The book business.

Je m’adresse aux essoufflés. À ceux qui ont tout essayé. Aux éreintés qui poursuivent le bonheur sans l’atteindre. Ceci n’est pas une recette, mais un portrait des temps qui courent et qui font du bien quand ils s’arrêtent. Un appel à une autre manière de vivre.

The Rise of the West is famous for its ambitious scope and intellectual rigor. In it, McNeill challenges the Spengler-Toynbee view that a number of separate civilizations pursued essentially independent careers, and argues instead that human cultures interacted at every stage of their history. The author suggests that, from the Neolithic beginnings of grain agriculture to the present, major social changes in all parts of the world were triggered by new or newly important foreign stimuli, and he presents a persuasive narrative of world history to support this claim.

Tania De Rozario was just twelve years old when she was gay-exorcised. Convinced that her boyish style and demeanor were a sign of something wicked, her mother and a pair of her church friends tried to “banish the evil” from Tania. That day, the young girl realized that monsters weren’t just found in horror tales. They could lurk anywhere—including your own family and community—and look just like you. Dinner on Monster Island is Tania’s memoir of her life and childhood in Singapore—where she discovered how difference is often perceived as deviant, damaged, disobedient, and sometimes, demonic.

Learn how to leverage dark psychology and emotional manipulation techniques to get what you want out of people. This bundle contains volume one, two, and three in one audiobook!

Along with his groundbreaking essays that redefine politics, language, identity, and friendship in the light of gay experience and desire, this magisterial collection of 25 years of White's nonfiction writings includes dazzling subversive appreciations of cultural icons as diverse as Truman Capote and Cormac McCarthy, Robert Mapplethorpe and the singer formerly known as Prince.

Karan Johar is synonymous with success, panache, quick wit, and outspokenness, which sometimes inadvertently creates controversy and makes headlines. KJo, as he is popularly called, has been a much-loved Bollywood film director, producer, actor, and discoverer of new talent. But who is the man behind the icon we all know? Honest, heart-warming and insightful, An Unsuitable Boy is both the story of the life of an exceptional filmmaker at the peak of his powers and of an equally extraordinary human being who shows you how to survive and succeed in life.

One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed "fertility crisis" and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all - a successful, demanding career and the required 2.3 children - before their biological clocks stopped ticking. Now, however, conversation has turned to whether it's necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement for a fulfilling life.

From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing. Starting with Hodson’s own work experience, which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre - including modeling and working on a NASA Mars mission - Hodson expands outward, looking at the ways in which the human will submits, whether in the marketplace or in a relationship.

Tom Papa is a little worried about you. You seem stressed, overworked, and, frankly, a little mixed up. Everyone is fighting an overwhelming feeling that things are getting worse, that we should be doing more, that we're not good enough. Well, life isn't perfect. There have always been problems, and there always will be. You can fight for the things you believe in, you can work really, really hard, but you shouldn't lose track of the fact that while you're doing all that, life is flying by at lightning-fast speed.

Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society—state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women’s rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy—alongside more individually personalized matters: can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8 am meeting? In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication’s “Work Friend” columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights.

This is a collection of 26 essays on a variety of theosophical, spiritual and esoteric subjects by some of the most notable and prominent names in the history of theosophy. Compiled specifically with the student in mind.

Intended to be a defense of the Christian religion, Pensées is a penetrating collection of thoughts on faith, reason, and theology. Unfinished at the time of Pascal's death, the book consists of philosophical fragments on the "wretchedness" of man and the controversial schisms of the church at the time. It includes the philosopher's infamous wager encouraging belief over agnosticism, as well as his thoughts on numerous other topics. Endlessly quotable, Pensées overflows with pearls of wisdom, each elusive sentence pregnant with a universe of thought.

This unique collection of material, drawing on esoteric sources produced through centuries, contains thought-provoking essays establishing how the body reveals the laws and principles operating throughout the universe. Eighteen chapters and lushly illustrated plates from early and rare mystical texts make this an essential part of any occultist's library.

The crônica, a literary genre peculiar to Brazilian newspapers, allows writers, or even soccer stars, to address a wide readership on any theme they like. Chatty, mystical, intimate, flirtatious, and revelatory, Clarice Lispector’s pieces for the Saturday edition of Rio’s leading paper, the Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, take the forms of memories, essays, aphorisms, and serialized stories. Endlessly delightful, her insights make one sit up and think, whether about children or social ills or pets or society women or the business of writing or love.

Old Truths and New Clichés collects nineteen essays—most of them previously unpublished in English—by Isaac Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic vision throughout an astonishing and prolific literary career spanning more than six decades. Expanding on themes reflected in his best-known work, the book illuminates in new ways the rich intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and biographical background of Singer's singular achievement as the first Yiddish-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a magazine article, but John McPhee kept encountering so much irresistible information that he wrote a book. It is perhaps the last word on the subject (the first came in 500 BC and is attributed to Confucius). McPhee writes about the botany, history, and industry of oranges, from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida, who may be the last of the individual orange barons.