History Essays

Despite their phenomenal decades-long success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close, contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one.

Netting the Sun offers a carefully crafted diversity of natural and human stories from a landscape seemingly empty and forlorn to passing casual travelers. This surprising interpretation of south central Oregon's botany, geology, wildlife, ethnography, and history reveals what a truly special place the high desert is.

Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) presents the second installment in the Library of America series devoted to classic American sportswriters, a definitive collector's edition of the pathbreaking writer who invented the long-form sports story.

Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It's an inquiry into why we swim - the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It's a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It's about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You'll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps.

This collection of 24 essays is a perfect introduction to the world of Lewis Thomas. Topics ranging from the riddle of smelling to nuclear proliferation carry the gentle, unassuming persuasiveness that characterizes the author’s work. Here we are also introduced to the concerns that have distinguished Thomas’ literary career: the natural altruism of organisms; the inter-relatedness of all creatures; the fragility of the human species; the uneasiness of life on a threatened planet.

In this stunning debut, Laura Lee weaves unforgettable and eye-opening essays on a variety of taboo topics. In “History of Scars” and “Aluminum’s Erosions”, Laura dives head-first into heavier themes revolving around intimacy, sexuality, trauma, mental illness, and the passage of time. In “Poetry of the World”, Laura shifts and addresses the grief she feels by being geographically distant from her mother whom, after being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, is relocated to a nursing home in Korea.

Golf, the writer Jim Bishop once said, "is a game played by 20 million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun." For so many golfers, this description of the great game is all too true. That innocent thrill of striking a drive cleanly for the first time, or holing that amazing putt, is all but a distant memory. Bogged down by getting up at some ridiculous hour to get a decent tee time, their average round is a frustrating four hours of miss hits, hooks, slices, and bad putts. But a whole group of modern players have left their regular course behind, and rediscovered the magic of the game in the process.

La fragilidad del campamento emprende un recorrido histórico y filosófico, partiendo de la antigüedad, cuando un hombre podía ser condenado a muerte por motivos de disidencia religiosa, hasta nuestros tiempos, donde la aceptación de las diferencias es el componente básico para la construcción de cualquier democracia verdadera.

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.

Hear some of the greatest American essays ever written! This unabridged collection covers a multitude of subjects, including philosophy, politics, turkeys, and dogs.

Michel de Montaigne, one of the foremost writers of the French Renaissance and the originator of the genre of the essay, wrote on subjects ranging from friendship to imagination, from language to conscience. This collection includes 22 of Montaigne's essays, including "Of Prognostications," "Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes," "Of Pedantry," and "Of Friendship."

Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940), war vieles: Philosoph, Kulturkritiker, Übersetzer - aber auch ein Schriftsteller. Auf der Flucht vor den Nazis, die Frankreich besetzt hatten, nahm er sich an der spanischen Grenze das Leben. Sein Essay Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften beweist außerordentlich eindrucksvoll, dass eine an sich wissenschaftliche Analyse großer Literatur selbst große Literatur sein kann!

From adventure to indenture, martyrs to merchants, Partition to plantation, from Kashmir to Kerala, Japan to Jamaica and beyond, the many facets of the great migrations of India and the world are mapped in India Moving, the first book of its kind. To understand how millions of people have moved - from, to and within India - the book embarks on a journey laced with evidence, argument, and wit.

With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production.

The writing of Death of a President, William Manchester's award-winning account of President Kennedy's assassination, is the topic of the title essay in this collection, as it was a controversy like few others, pitting one of the most prominent historians of the day against Jackie Kennedy, the most famous and private widow in the world. The essay provides an insider's account of the struggle to see the book published.

No hi ha una sola Roma; n'hi ha tantes com mirades hi reposen, tantes com passejades o cafès. Roma és un pòsit d'hores viscudes, d'esglésies on tornes a entrar, de columnes i negronis, de l'art que fascina i els ocres que t'atrapen. Aquesta és una Roma íntima, feta de records personals, de viatges i anècdotes, de les veus d'uns altres i de la pròpia veu que mira de copsar-la a través dels detalls. Un poble que és capital sentimental. No és una guia turística ni una enciclopèdia històrica, sinó un retrat de la ciutat i, alhora, un autoretrat de qui la mira i la viu.

A Room of One's Own è un saggio della celebre autrice inglese Virginia Woolf. Fu pubblicato nel 1929 e si è basato su due conferenze tenute a ai due college femminili di Newnham e Girton, dell'Università di Cambridge, nel 1928. Il saggio, scorrevole e brillante, ripercorre la storia della scrittura nelle donne, e la storia delle donne, e la storia della scrittura. Pertanto è rivolto, oltre che alle donne, anche a tutti coloro che vogliono scrivere.

Law and Criminality in the Middle Ages: Academic Essays by Professor Onyoo Elizabeth Kim of Handong University in Korea is an academic feat in legal studies.

Trained by America's best medieval canon lawyers and having had extensive medieval law research experience in Europe, Professor Kim delivers an audiobook on the Law of the Middle Ages that is relevant for today's legal, scholarly, and intellectual discussions.

Australia is on the brink of momentous change, but only if its citizens and politicians can come to new terms with the past. In this inspiring essay, Mark McKenna considers the role of history in making and unmaking the nation. From Captain Cook to the frontier wars, from Australia Day to the Uluru Statement, we are seeing fresh debates and recognitions. McKenna argues that it is time to move beyond the history wars and that truth-telling about the past will be liberating and healing. This is an urgent essay about a nation’s moment of truth.

These passages from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson on religion and spiritual philosophy reveal a metaphysical thought that is quintessentially American and universally relevant to the spiritual needs of today's world. It is seldom that an American philosopher is found among the gurus, mystics, and masters present in the spiritual milieu. Emerson combined the spiritual intuition of the East with the philosophical acumen of the West.