Essay Essays

Baseball has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game and create an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management.

In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.

Collected Essays contains nearly 80 essays, reviews and occasional pieces composed between novels, plays and travel books over four prolific decades. From Henry James and Somerset Maugham to Ho Chi Minh and Kim Philby, the range of subjects is eclectic and stimulating, his subjects brought vividly to life. The resulting collection is as revealing as autobiography and characteristically rich in humour, insight and doubt.

Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism.

Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark.

Let Dan help you dig a little deeper into how life’s truths show up in the weight room and on the field of play. What you learn in this selection will get you thinking more broadly into how it all fits together - fitness, health, longevity, and easy strength.

This is a meditation on the power of creative connection. Drawing on 20 years' experience as a writer and performer, Kae Tempest explores how and why creativity - however we choose to practise it - can cultivate greater self-awareness and help us establish a deeper relationship to ourselves and the world. Honest, tender and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is a call to arms that speaks to a universal yet intimate truth.

Presented here are 3 short works by Virginia Woolf, each a unique consideration of the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The essays included are: The Father: Woolf's ruminations of family and, particularly, the father within the works of Dostoyevsky. More Dostoyevsky: Further thoughts on Dostoyevsky's work, an author of whom she once wrote “It is directly obvious that he is the greatest writer ever born." In Cranford: A comedic exploration of Dostoyevsky's work where Woolf transplants the great master into English provincial life to explore the unique nature of his work and the English nature.

A gorgeously illustrated collection of essays written by today’s queer heroes - featuring contributions from Elton John, Tan France, Gus Kenworthy, Paris Lees, Russell Tovey, Munroe Bergdorf, and many others. The Queer Bible is a celebration of LGBTQ+ history and culture, edited by model, performer, and GQ contributing editor Jack Guinness.

“I’ve always felt that the term fairy tale doesn’t quite capture the essence of these stories,” writes Emily Urquhart. “I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories.” In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm—or the onset of a loved one’s dementia.

In On the Firmness of the Wise Man Seneca argues that Stoicism is not as harsh as it first appears. Recalling the figure of Cato the Younger, Seneca argues that Cato as a wise person suffered neither injury nor insult. Although Serenus objects to this paradox, Seneca provides further analogies to emphasize the impervious nature of the wise person. In chapter 5 Seneca distinguishes between contumelia (insults) and iniuria (injuries).

Mairead Small Staid’s debut, The Traces, is a work of memoir and criticism that explores the nature of happiness in art, literature, and philosophy, structured around a season spent in Italy and a reading of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Poised between plummeting depressions, the author considers the intellectual merits of joy and the redeeming promise offered by the beauty, both natural and manmade, that surrounds her.

Whether writing about the genesis of his plays, such as Aunt Dan and Lemon; discussing how the privileged world of arts and letters takes for granted the work of the “unobtrusives”, the people who serve our food and deliver our mail; or describing his upbringing in the sheltered world of Manhattan’s cultural elite, Shawn reveals a unique ability to step back from the appearance of things to explore their deeper social meanings.

Early in her career, Katie Pryal learned that being a professor isn’t easy if your brain isn’t quite right. “I was a junior in college when I finally realized that I was different in a way that my medically inclined parents would call ‘clinical.’” In these deeply personal, fiery essays, Pryal tells her story of transformation that began the moment she chose to publicly disclose her own mental illness and leave her career in higher education to begin fighting for a better world for people with psychiatric disabilities.

Annie Liontas suffered multiple concussions in her thirties. In Sex with a Brain Injury, she writes about what it means to be one of the “walking wounded,” facing her fear, her rage, her physical suffering, and the effects of head trauma on her marriage and other relationships. Forced to reckon with her own queer mother’s battle with addiction, Liontas finds echoes in their pain. Liontas weaves history, philosophy, and personal accounts to interrogate and expand representations of mental health, ability, and disability—particularly in relation to women and the LGBT community.

"Partout dans le monde, la question du genre est cruciale. Alors j'aimerais aujourd'hui que nous nous mettions à rêver à un monde différent et à le préparer. Un monde plus équitable. Un monde où les hommes et les femmes seront plus heureux et plus honnêtes envers eux-mêmes. Et voici le point de départ : nous devons élever nos filles autrement. Nous devons élever nos fils autrement." Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie aborde le sujet controversé du féminisme avec lucidité, éloquence et humour.

When Roland Barthes's groundbreaking Mythologies first appeared in English in 1972, it was immediately recognized as one of the most significant works in French theory - yet nearly half of the essays from the original work were missing. This new edition of Mythologies is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic. It includes the brilliant "Astrology", never published in English before.

Navigating racial identity, gender roles, workplace dynamics, and beauty standards, Mia Mercado's hilarious essay collection explores the contradictions of being a millennial woman, which usually means being kind of a weirdo.

Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club series featured a complex cast of characters and touched on an impressive range of issues that were underrepresented at the time: divorce, adoption, childhood illness, class division, and racism, to name a few. In We Are the Baby-Sitters Club, writers from the original BSC generation will reflect on the enduring legacy of Ann M. Martin’s beloved series, 35 years later - celebrating the BSC’s profound cultural influence.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s deeply personal essay explores racial conflict through the prism of his childhood and the influence of his father, a police officer who walked the beat between two worlds.