"A monumental, canon-defining anthology of four centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith. Many of the essays Phillip Lopate has gathered here address themselves--sometimes critically--to American values, but even in those that don't, one can detect a subtext about being American. The Founding Fathers and early American writers self-consciously struggle to establish a recognizable...

"From the universally acclaimed, best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: ten pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. Here are six pieces written in 1968 from the "Points West" Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband, John Gregory Dunne about: American newspapers; a session with Gamblers Anonymous;...

A compilation of fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time.

"Daniel Mallory Ortberg is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids--from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith. From a thoughtful analysis...

"Whether he's describing Tracy Emin or Warhol, the films of Barbet Schroeder ("Schroeder is well aware that life is not a narrative; that we impose form on the movements of chance, contingency, and impulse....") or the installations of Barbara Kruger ("Kruger compresses the telling exchanges of lived experience that betray how skewed our lives are..."), Indiana is never just describing. His writing is refreshing, erudite, joyful. Indiana champions...

"From the author of Make Your Home Among Strangers comes a collection of essays on feeling like an "accidental" American and the tectonic edges of identity in a society centered on whiteness. What does it mean to find yourself a stranger in the country where you were born? Raised in Miami, the daughter of Cuban refugees whose aspirations for their child began with a plan to name her after a Miss America pageant winner, Jennine Capó Crucet grew up...