Literary Collections : Essays

In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives - a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today. more...

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In the four and a half centuries since Machiavelli’s death, no single and unanimously accepted interpretation of his ideas has succeeded in imposing itself upon the lively debate over the meaning of his works. Yet there has never been any doubt about the fundamental importance of Machiavelli’s contribution to Western political theory. The Portable Machiavelli brings together the complete texts of The Prince, Belfagor, and Castruccio Castracani, newly translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa especially for this volume. In addition, the editors include an abridged version of The Discourses; a play, The Mandrake Root, in its entirety; seven private letters; and selections from The Art of War and The History of Florence. more...

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One of the most famous non-fiction American books, Walden by Henry David Thoreau is the history of Thoreau's visit to Ralph Waldo Emerson's woodland retreat near Walden Pond. Thoreau, stirred by the philosophy of the transcendentalists, used the sojourn as an experiment in self reliance and minimalism… "so as to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die... more...

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John Berger occupies a unique position in the international cultural landscape: artist, filmmaker, poet, philosopher, novelist, essayist, he is also a deeply thoughtful political activist. In Hold Everything Dear , he artistry and activism mesh in an attempt to make sense of the world as we have come to know it during the past six years. more...

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Little Dorrit is a serial novel by Charles Dickens published originally between 1855 and 1857. It is a work of satire on the shortcomings of the government and society of the period. Much of Dickens''s ire is focused upon the institutions of debtor''s prisons—in which people who owed money were imprisoned, unable to work, until they repaid their debts. The representative prison in this case is the Marshalsea where the author''s own father had been imprisoned. Most of Dickens''s other critiques in this particular novel are about other issues with regards to the social safety net: industry, and the treatment and safety of workers; the bureaucracy of the British Treasury (as figured in the fictional "Circumlocution Office" [Bk. 1, Ch. 10]); and the separation of people based on the lack of intercourse between the classes. — Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Intuitive navigation. . Text annotation and mark-up. . more...

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