History Essays

"As much as I love boxing, I hate it." So begins screenwriter, novelist, and journalist Budd Schulberg's collection of essays on the sweet science of bruising, a sport that fueled his literary ambitions and unsettled his conscience from a young age. He gives riveting accounts of classic bouts, such as Rocky Marciano - Archie Moore, Muhammad Ali - George Foreman, and Marvin Hagler - Thomas Hearns. Yet these essays also offer insight into the sport's sociological significance from a man who covered its highlights and corruption-marred lowlights for decades.

Soldier Keith Nightingale has conducted terrain walks in Normandy for over forty years with veterans, active-duty military, and local French civilians. Over the decades Nightingale conducted dozens of formal interviews and informal conversations with many of the principals of the day, including Generals Bradley, Collins, Gavin, Ridgway, and Hill. Added to this rare new primary material from the top brass are numerous conversations with lower-ranking vets who did the heavy lifting.

With a blend of reportage, historical data, and pop culture, Black Genius touches on timely issues of race, class, and creativity. Tre’s life and career put him in a unique position to become a cultural observer, diving into predominantly-Black cities, communities, and schools with an ever-watchful eye of what was happening around Black opportunity, mobility, politics, and institutions. In this collection Tre pinpoints four key aspects of Black American genius—innovation, family, celebration, and community as the recipe to coming out on top.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

Gli scritti riuniti in questa raccolta vertono sulle funzioni della letteratura, su autori che Eco ha frequentato a lungo come Nerval, Joyce, Borges (ma anche Aristotele e Dante), sull’influenza di alcuni testi più o meno letterari sullo sviluppo degli eventi storici, su alcuni problemi tipici del narrare, come la rappresentazione verbale dello spazio, l’ironia intertestuale, la natura dei mondi possibili della finzione, e su alcuni concetti chiave della scrittura "creativa", come il simbolo, lo stile, la "zeppa" (ovvero i momenti apparentemente "morti", e meramente funzionali nello sviluppo d

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you’ve never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by “rotten girls,” swaggering literary popstars, millionaire e-writers churning out the longest-ever novels, underground comics, the surreal works of Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, and Nobel laureate Mo Yan, and what is widely hailed as a golden age of Chinese science fiction.

This was Alan Clark’s first volume of diaries and the only one that he recorded. As such it is a unique and historical record and reminder of the man and his work. To hear Alan Clark reading the book in his marvelously rich voice adds immeasurably to the pleasure of these informative and entertaining diaries. The recording covers two Parliaments and constitutes the most outspoken and revealing account of British politics ever written.

A collection of four essays by noted Masonic scholar Frank C. Higgins. The first explores the labyrinthine paths of solutions that attempt to define the exact character of the "riddle of the ages" that is known as Freemasonry, as it has survived throughout history, in multiple cultures

Imagine having the entire Jewish people over for dinner—and hosting a raucous, creative, riveting debate about their collective future. Jewish Priorities offers, for the first time, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and genuinely "pan-Jewish" conversation. Encompassing more than sixty top authors from around the Jewish world—Israelis and Diaspora writers; younger influencers and veteran opinion leaders; rabbinic and communal leaders, journalists and scholars, and literary and cultural figures, ranging from secular to ultra-Orthodox—each contributor offers a different priority for the Jewish people.

In this groundbreaking book, Fortune 500 innovation guru and creativity instructor Bryan Mattimore takes listeners on a journey through time to explore the unique personality quirks and crazy ideas of history's greats.

Recuperando el título de un pequeño cuento con el que la puertorriqueña Rosario Ferré analizó la misoginia literaria en los años noventa, "El coloquio de las perras" pretende ser un homenaje a las escritoras hispanohablantes que sortearon todo tipo de obstáculos para hacer su literatura. Desde populares figuras como Elena Garro, Gabriela Mistral o Alejandra Pizarnik hasta otras más desconocidas como Alcira Soust Scaffo, Agustina González López o María Emilia Cornejo, la periodista y poeta Luna Miguel entabla una conversación llena de ladridos con una docena de mujeres...

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer–and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.

Anne Waldman takes the opportunity with this 20th-anniversary expanded edition to add 20 poems to this collection that brings into focus her lifelong engagement with “chant” as central to contemporary performative poetry.

Many creatures lurk in the dark, weaving on top of one another, roiling together like waves on the night sea. The darkness forms in layers to encompass the land, fill the corners, and obscure angles. Untold mysteries lie just beyond reach told in many tongues, many inflections, many rhythms. The stories are many. Innumerable. Legion.

Tracing 25 centuries of human history, from the fourth century BC to the present day, Manguel dedicates each of his chapters to a single character - ranging from our best-known thinkers, scientists, and artists to seemingly minor figures of whom we know little more than one inspired utterance - in whom he identifies a particular way of asking the question "why?"

We know David Grossman's voice of ringing moral clarity from way back: since the late 1980s and The Yellow Wind, his classic work on the urgency of the two-state solution and the price paid by both occupier and occupied, he has been criticizing his country's government and pushing for paths to a lasting peace. Just after October 7th, 2023, he retreated inwards to ask himself anew these difficult and necessary questions about his beloved nation:

Available once again for a new generation of audiences, the second volume in Arthur Ashe’s epic trilogy that chronicles the remarkable legacy of Black athletes in the United States—a major addition to our understanding of American history and the fulfillment of this legendary sports star and global activist’s lifelong dream.

Si bien el ensayo emplea un narrador ficticio y la prosa para explorar a mujeres (tanto escritoras como personajes de ficción), y el manuscrito preparado para las conferencias se tituló "Mujeres y Ficción", el ensayo está considerado no-ficción. Generalmente se clasifica como un texto feminista, y su argumento gira en torno a un espacio literal y ficticio para escritoras que se encuentran dentro de una tradición literaria dominada por hombres.

One of the most influential books on economics ever written, Thomas Robert Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population remains one of the most controversial too. This 1798 work inspired naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to develop the theory of natural selection. But it has also sparked criticism - Karl Marx famously called Malthus a "lackey of the bourgeoisie." Yet this hasn't stopped leading present-day environmentalists from taking up Malthus's ideas.

Opposites and borders are never as clear as we think. With a novelist's eye for the unexpected, author Hari Kunzru takes listeners into the gray zone between life and death, public and private, black and white, and more. Along the way he meets philosophers and punk musicians, New Age gurus and space explorers, and together they investigate liminal spaces around the world. Into the Zone: Audio Essays includes a new foreword and afterword providing bookends to a series of brilliantly crafted intersections on history and the evolution of identity.