Essays Books - Page 13

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present

Phillip Lopate

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Essential! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I recently attended a lecture by Philip Lopate. It was informative, instructional, and entertaining. I can say the same about this anthology. Anyone interested in the personal essay--readers, and especially writers--will find this collection a gold mine. I highly recommend it.

A little disappointing 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 17 people found this review helpful.

I should have researched this book more--I thought it was about writing, but it is actually a compilation of essays.

The Art of the Personal Essay... 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Using this book as a reference for a class in writing the personal essay. It is very comprehensive and the essays are interesting and helpful.

Well worth it 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My favorite essay in this thick, heavy, door-stopping book is a humble writing of G.K. Chesterton entitled "A Piece of Chalk". I absolutely adore drawing with chalk and so of course I felt connected to him right off the bat. It was actually the first time I'd ever read Chesterton before, and I instantly fell in love. There is something in his writing that resonates with something inside me... in other words, it feels good. This anthology also includes other masters, both classic and modern such as Didion, Seneca, among many, many others. Despite the size, it's very easy to read through and find your own favorites thanks to the table that sorts the essays by theme.

Editorial Review:

Bringing together many great reflections on the human condition and the peculiarities of daily life, a unique collection of more than seventy-five essays ranges from classical predecessors of the genre up to today's finest writers. Reprint. NYT.

The Brief Bedford Reader

X. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, Jane E. Aaron

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Brief Bedford Reader is excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this book to use as a text for a composition course I teach. It features excellent sections on composition topics like cause and effect, narration, process analysis, classification, etc. The selections in the book really are "brief". Most are between three and five pages long. The topics and authors addressed are real-world, high interest issues that make great discussion pieces. Personally, I enjoyed reading the selections. They are excellent casual reading pieces.

The Bedford Reader 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

An excellent collection of stylistically important works. Very well-organized and informative as well as fun to read.

Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 100 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

America's leading observer of the international scene on the minute-by-minute events of September 11th--before, during and after

As the Foreign Affairs columnist for the The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman is in a unique position to interpret the world for American readers. Twice a week, Friedman's celebrated commentary provides the most trenchant, pithy,and illuminating perspective in journalism.

Longitudes and Attitudes contains the columns Friedman has published about the most momentous news story of our time, as well as a diary of his experiences and reactions during this period of crisis. As the author writes, the book is "not meant to be a comprehensive study of September 11 and all the factors that went into it. Rather, my hope is that it will constitute a 'word album' that captures and preserves the raw, unpolished, emotional and analytical responses that illustrate how I, and others, felt as we tried to grapple with September and its aftermath, as they were unfolding."

Readers have repeatedly said that Friedman has expressed the essence of their own feelings, helping them not only by explaining who "they" are, but also by reassuring us about who "we" are. More than any other journalist writing, Friedman gives voice to America's awakening sense of its role in a changed world.

Is This a Great Game, or What?: From A-Rod's Heart to Zim's Head--My 25 Years in Baseball

Tim Kurkjian

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian has spent over twenty-five years covering almost 3,000 Major League Baseball games and interviewing about that many players, coaches, managers and executives. 
In Is This a Great Game, or What?, Kurkjian combines his years of experience, uncanny knowledge and deep love of the game, to create a book filled with some of the most fascinating insight into Major League Baseball this side of Jim Bouton's bestseller, Ball Four. Whether he’s explaining what goes through a ballplayer’s mind when he faces a fastball in the chapter "My Face Was Crushed by a Bowling Ball Going 90mph", detailing bizarre rituals and superstitions performed by some of baseball's greatest players, or taking us into the locker room to see what transpires in the clubhouse of a Major League team, Kurkjian’s tales are at times hilarious, other times horrifying, yet always entertaining.
Kurkjian has spoken to some of the greatest ballplayers ever over the years and they have revealed details about themselves and the game they love with a candor that readers won't find anywhere else. Filled with anecdotes and fascinating insight, this is an essential book for baseball fans or anyone curious about America’s pastime.

A Practical Guide to Racism

C. H. Dalton

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A hilarious look at the races of the world—capturing the proud history and bright future of racism in one handy, authoritative, and deeply offensive volume

Meet “C. H. Dalton,” a professor of racialist studies and a leading authority on inferior people of all ethnicities, genders, religions, and sexual preferences. In the grand tradition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Birth of a Nation, he is on a mission to clarify the truth about self-supremacy, drawing on eminent scholarship to enlighten a new generation of hate-mongers. Presenting evidence that everyone should be hated (even white people), A Practical Guide to Racism contains sparkling bits of wisdom on such subjects as:
• The good life enjoyed by blacks, who shuffle through life unhindered by the white man’s burdens, such as reverse racism and white slavery, to become accomplished athletes, rhymesmiths, and dominoes champions.
• The sad story of the industrious, intelligent Jews, whose entire reputation is sullied by their unfortunate taste for the blood of Christian babies.
• A close look at the bizarre, sweet-smelling race known as “women,” who are not good at anything— especially ruling the free world.
• A crucial manual to Arabs, a people so sensitive they are liable to blow up at any time.
• A country-by-country breakdown of the “Yellow Peril,” with pointers for telling apart a race of people who all look the same.

Also included is a comprehensive glossary of timeless epithets, with hundreds of pejorative words for everyone from Phoenicians to Jews. A Practical Guide to Racism is sure to spark honest, instructive discourse.

Thomas Jefferson : Writings : Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters (Library of America)

Thomas Jefferson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A brillant mind but still bound by his times. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Mr. Jefferson was a brilliant man. I enjoy reading his works and appreciate this opportunity to gain insight into his logic and thought process as it evolved throughout his lifetime. His intellectualism and that eternal curiosity about his world place him head and shoulders above those men of his time. He bought Louisiana upon the suggestion of Thomas Paine and our nation spread westward as a result. He no doubt made major contributions towards the creation and founding of this nation. Thousands of accolades for his brilliance and achievements are in order. I'm not putting him on a pedestal, there was a dark side. He did own slaves. He was however in many ways morally and intellectually bound by the time he lived in. His thoughts regarding the mentality of slaves scream racism. His solution was to abolish slavery and export them back to Africa. He believed most would never fit in to American culture based on their resentments against enslavement and the racism they endured from white society at the time. His letters to American Indians in which he addressed them as "My Children" and assured them of his eternal blessings belied the fact that their lands were being taken away from them and they were being forced to be assimilated or slaughtered. He did not foresee the industrialization of America and wanted to leave manufacturing to the Europeans to preserve the American way of life. In short, Mr. Jefferson was all too human, who no doubt would be appalled at the antics of modern day Republicans and Democrats.

Editorial Review:

The most comprehensive one-volume selection of Jefferson ever published. Contains the "Autobiography," "Notes on the State of Virginia," public and private papers, including the original and revised drafts of the Declaration of Independence, addresses, and 287 letters.

Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship

N. T. Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Wow. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is my first time reading N.T. Wright's books, though I've read an essay and heard him speak. This is an unbelievable book. The first half of the book walks through the New Testament and describes each author's view of Jesus and what it looks like to follow Him. The second half seems to walk through some of the major issues of discipleship and what it actually looks like to follow Jesus. I loved it and will go back to it again and again.

Costly Christian Discipleship 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Tom Wright, Anglican bishop in England, once again elucidates in a cogent but thoroughly readable style that only he can what it means to follow Jesus. If one is a sometime Christian who does not want to 'count the cost' of what it means to 'be Jesus' to a hurting world, you'd better avoid this book. In a world full of evangelists who promise 'what's in it for us' if we follow Jesus, Tom Wright challenges us to really take up the cross and follow the Lord. As a Southern Baptist, I can't think of another theologian, of whatever denomination, that is more challenging and encouraging than Tom Wright. Buy it, but be prepared to keep your marker handy.

The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

Paul Loeb

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What keeps us going when times get tough? How do we act to create a more humane world, no matter how hard it seems? How do we offer models of involvement for our students when many feel their actions cannot matter? The Impossible Will Take a Little While gathers stories and essays of engagement that range across nations, eras, and political movements. These visionary and eloquent voices include Diane Ackerman, Sherman Alexie, Maya Angelou, Mary Catherine Bateson, Ariel Dorfman, Marian Wright Edelman, Eduardo Galeano, Susan Griffin, V‡clav Havel, Seamus Heaney, Tony Kushner, Jonathan Kozol, Bill McKibben, Nelson Mandela, Pablo Neruda, Henri Nouwen, Arundhati Roy, Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, Cornel West, Terry Tempest Williams, and Howard Zinn. Their voices can help us all keep working for a better world, despite the obstacles. In The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a phrase borrowed from Billie Holliday, the editor of Soul of a Citizen brings together fifty stories and essays that range across nations, eras, wars, and political movements. Danusha Goska, an Indiana activist with a paralyzing physical disability, writes about overcoming political immobilization, drawing on her history with the Peace Corps and Mother Teresa. Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, finds value in seemingly doomed or futile actions taken by oppressed peoples. Rosemarie Freeney Harding recalls the music that sustained the civil rights movement, and Paxus Calta-Star recounts the powerful vignette of an 18-year-old who launched the overthrow of Bulgaria's dictatorship. Many of the essays are new, others classic works that continue to inspire. Together, these writers explore a path of heartfelt community involvement that leads beyond despair to compassion and hope. The voices collected in The Impossible Will Take a Little While will help keep us all working for a better world despite the obstacles.

The Virgin Kiss and Other Adventures

Frank Scoblete

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Experience the dazzling, amazing, exciting and wonderful adventures of best-selling author Frank Scoblete. Learn how he beat the casinos for 20 years and was even banned from many of them for his winning expertise. Discover how he astral traveled in time and to other worlds bringing back proof of these mind-bending, sometimes terrifying adventures. Enjoy how he creatively handled some of the most wildly eccentric students imaginable during his teaching career, including Gerry the Rat Boy, Wrong Way McKay, Mel Odious, and the Disgusting Beast. Experience how he learned the laborer's ropes as a teenager in a dangerous Manhattan housing project in New York City. Go into the studio as he partakes in a disastrous and very painful television interview. Suffer with him as he realizes what caused his weight gain and how he bravely fought against it for a full 24 hours. Laugh when he decides to go after sex for the first time as a teenager. Marvel at his first kiss, his Virgin Kiss, which was not like anybody s first kiss ever. This is a hilariously funny but, at times, scary, nail-biting and thoroughly riveting and enjoyable read about someone whose life is indeed stranger and more exciting than fiction.

The Devil's Dictionary

Ambrose Bierce

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Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Bitterly Funny 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Devil's Dictionary / 0-19-512627-0

DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

This "dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce is witty, scathing, and totally hilarious. In his characteristic style, he dishes out his contempt and distaste for those societal norms which he sees as foolish, hypocritical, and dangerous. This is not a book to read, but - truly - a dictionary to reference whenever the mood takes. The aphorisms ring true, even today, and the only real complaint is that we would wish for so much more - the dictionary is "only" 219 pages long, and while that is quiet a fair lot of words, oh, we wish he could have left us even more...

Editorial Review:

These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and later reissued under its preferred name in 1911, Bierce's notorious collection of barbed definitions forcibly contradicts Samuel Johnson's earlier definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. There was nothing harmless about Ambrose Bierce, and the words he shaped into verbal pitchforks a century ago--with or without the devil's help--can still draw blood today.