Download or read book The Lost Origins of the Essay written by John D'Agata and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expansive and exhilarating world tour of innovative nonfiction writing I think the reason we've never pinpointed the real beginning to this genre is because we've never agreed on what the genre even is. Do we read nonfiction in order to receive information, or do we read it to experience art? It's not very clear sometimes. This, then, is a book that tries to offer a clear objective: I am here in search of art. I am here to track the origins of an alternative to commerce. John D'Agata leaves no tablet unturned in his exploration of the roots of the essay. The Lost Origins of the Essay takes the reader from ancient Mesopotamia to classical Greece and Rome, from fifth-century Japan to nineteenth-century France, to modern Brazil, Germany, Barbados, and beyond. With brief and brilliant introductions to seminal works by Heraclitus, Sei Sho-nagon, Michel de Montaigne, Jonathan Swift, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Octavio Paz, and more than forty other luminaries, D'Agata reexamines the international forebears of today's American nonfiction. This idiosyncratic collection makes a perfect historical companion to D'Agata's The Next American Essay, a touchstone among students and practitioners of the lyric essay.
Download or read book The Making of the American Essay written by John D'Agata and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 821 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Now, with "The making of the American essay' the editor includes selections ranging from Anne Bradstreet's secular prayers to Washington Irving's satires, Emily Dickinson's love letters to Kenneth Goldsmith's catalog's, Gertrude Stein's portraits to James Baldwin's and Norman Mailer's mediations on boxing. In this volume the editor uncovers new stories in the American essay's past and shows us that some of the most fiercely daring writers in the American literary canon have turned to the essay in order to produce some of our culture's most exhilarating art."-- book jacket.
Download or read book The Next American Essay written by John D'Agata and published by New History of the Essay. This book was released on 2003-02 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of nonfiction essays on such topics as culture, myth, history, romance, and sex includes contributions by such authors as Guy Davenport, Annie Dillard, Jamaica Kincaid, and Susan Sontag. In this singular collection, John D'Agata takes a literary tour of lyric essays written by the masters of the craft. Beginning with 1975 and John McPhee's ingenious piece, the Search for Marvin Gardens, D'Agata selects an example of creative nonfiction for each subsequent year. These essays are unrestrained, elusive, explosive, mysterious, a personal lingual playground. They encompass and illuminate culture, myth, history, romance, and sex. Each essay is a world of its own, a world so distinctive it resists definition.
Download or read book Halls of Fame written by John D'Agata and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "John D'Agata is an alchemist who changes trash into purest gold." —Guy Davenport, Harper's John D'Agata journeys the endless corridors of America's myriad halls of fame and faithfully reports on what he finds there. In a voice all his own, he brilliantly maps his terrain in lists, collage, and ludic narratives. With topics ranging from Martha Graham to the Flat Earth Society, from the brightest light in Vegas to the artist Henry Darger, who died in obscurity, Halls of Fame hovers on the brink between prose and poetry, deep seriousness and high comedy, the subject and the self.
Download or read book Philosophy Between the Lines written by Arthur M. Melzer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Shines a floodlight on a topic that has been cloaked in obscurity . . . a landmark work in both intellectual history and political theory” (The Wall Street Journal). Philosophical esotericism—the practice of communicating one’s unorthodox thoughts “between the lines”—was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. Despite its long and well-documented history, however, esotericism is often dismissed today as a rare occurrence. But by ignoring esotericism, we risk cutting ourselves off from a full understanding of Western philosophical thought. Walking readers through both an ancient (Plato) and a modern (Machiavelli) esoteric work, Arthur M. Melzer explains what esotericism is—and is not. It relies not on secret codes, but simply on a more intensive use of familiar rhetorical techniques like metaphor, irony, and insinuation. Melzer explores the various motives that led thinkers in different times and places to engage in this strange practice, while also exploring the motives that lead more recent thinkers not only to dislike and avoid this practice but to deny its very existence. In the book’s final section, “A Beginner’s Guide to Esoteric Reading,” Melzer turns to how we might once again cultivate the long-forgotten art of reading esoteric works. The first comprehensive, book-length study of the history and theoretical basis of philosophical esotericism, Philosophy Between the Lines is “a treasure-house of insight and learning. It is that rare thing: an eye-opening book . . . By making the world before Enlightenment appear as strange as it truly was, [Melzer] makes our world stranger than we think it is” (George Kateb, Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University). “Brilliant, pellucid, and meticulously researched.” —City Journal
Download or read book About a Mountain written by John D'Agata and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named One of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books Written by the New York Times Magazine, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Editors' Choice. When John D'Agata helps his mother move to Las Vegas one summer, he begins to follow a story about the federal government's plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain; the result is a startling portrait that compels a reexamination of the future of human life.
Download or read book An Essay on the History of Civil Society written by Adam Ferguson and published by . This book was released on 1767 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lost in the Meritocracy written by Walter Kirn and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book A Daily Beast Best Book of the Year A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year From elementary school on, Walter Kirn knew how to stay at the top of his class: He clapped erasers, memorized answer keys, and parroted his teachers’ pet theories. But when he launched himself eastward to an Ivy League university, Kirn discovered that the temple of higher learning he had expected was instead just another arena for more gamesmanship, snobbery, and social climbing. In this whip-smart memoir of kissing-up, cramming, and competition, Lost in the Meritocracy reckons the costs of an educational system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within.
Download or read book Lost In Summerland written by Barrett Swanson and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barrett Swanson embarks on a personal quest across the United States to uncover what it means to be an American amid the swirl of our post-truth climate in this collection of critically acclaimed essays and reportage. A trip with his brother to a New York psychic community becomes a rollicking tour through the world of American spiritualism. At a wilderness retreat in Ohio, men seek a cure for toxic masculinity, while in the hinterlands of Wisconsin, antiwar veterans turn to farming when they cannot sustain the heroic myth of service. And when his best friend’s body washes up on the shores of the Mississippi River, he falls into the gullet of true crime discussion boards, exploring the stamina of conspiracy theories along the cankered byways of the Midwest. In this exhilarating debut, Barrett Swanson introduces us to a new reality. At a moment when grand unifying narratives have splintered into competing storylines, these critically acclaimed essays document the many routes by which people are struggling to find stability in the aftermath of our country’s political and economic collapse, sometimes at dire and disillusioning costs.
Download or read book Leonardo s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms written by Stephen Jay Gould and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his customary brilliance, Gould examines the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that build nature’s and humanity’s diversity and order.
Download or read book Essays on the Great Depression written by Ben S. Bernanke and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Nobel Prize–winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a landmark book that provides vital lessons for understanding financial crises and their sometimes-catastrophic economic effects As chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke helped avert a greater financial disaster than the Great Depression. And he did so by drawing directly on what he had learned from years of studying the causes of the economic catastrophe of the 1930s—work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. This influential work is collected in Essays on the Great Depression, an important account of the origins of the Depression and the economic lessons it teaches.
Download or read book The Story of America written by Jill Lepore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories -- from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address -- to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print.
Download or read book The Contemporary American Essay written by Phillip Lopate and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling anthology of essays by some of the best writers of the past quarter century—from Barry Lopez and Margo Jefferson to David Sedaris and Samantha Irby—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate. The first decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a blossoming of creative nonfiction. In this extraordinary collection, Phillip Lopate gathers essays by forty-seven of America’s best contemporary writers, mingling long-established eminences with newer voices and making room for a wide variety of perspectives and styles. The Contemporary American Essay is a monument to a remarkably adaptable form and a treat for anyone who loves fantastic writing. Hilton Als • Nicholson Baker • Thomas Beller • Sven Birkerts • Eula Biss • Mary Cappello • Anne Carson • Terry Castle • Alexander Chee • Teju Cole • Bernard Cooper • Sloane Crosley • Charles D’Ambrosio • Meghan Daum • Brian Doyle • Geoff Dyer • Lina Ferreira • Lynn Freed • Rivka Galchen • Ross Gay • Louise Glück • Emily Fox Gordon • Patricia Hampl • Aleksandar Hemon • Samantha Irby • Leslie Jamison • Margo Jefferson • Laura Kipnis • David Lazar • Yiyun Li • Phillip Lopate • Barry Lopez • Thomas Lynch • John McPhee • Ander Monson • Eileen Myles • Maggie Nelson • Meghan O’Gieblyn • Joyce Carol Oates • Darryl Pinckney • Lia Purpura • Karen Russell • David Sedaris • Shifra Sharlin • David Shields • Floyd Skloot • Rebecca Solnit • Clifford Thompson • Wesley Yang An Anchor Original.
Download or read book The Scent of Time written by Byung-Chul Han and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his philosophical reflections on the art of lingering, acclaimed cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han argues that the value we attach today to the vita activa is producing a crisis in our sense of time. Our attachment to the vita activa creates an imperative to work which degrades the human being into a labouring animal, an animal laborans. At the same time, the hyperactivity which characterizes our daily routines robs human beings of the capacity to linger and the faculty of contemplation. It therefore becomes impossible to experience time as fulfilling. Drawing on a range of thinkers including Heidegger, Nietzsche and Arendt, Han argues that we can overcome this temporal crisis only by revitalizing the vita contemplativa and relearning the art of lingering. For what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity for reflection and contemplation, and when life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness.
Download or read book Hamlet s Mill written by Giorgio De Santillana and published by Gambit, Incorporated, Publishers. This book was released on 1969 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Catholicism and Democracy written by Emile Perreau-Saussine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the Catholic Church redefined its relationship to the state in the wake of the French Revolution Catholicism and Democracy is a history of Catholic political thinking from the French Revolution to the present day. Emile Perreau-Saussine investigates the church's response to liberal democracy, a political system for which the church was utterly unprepared. Looking at leading philosophers and political theologians—among them Joseph de Maistre, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Charles Péguy—Perreau-Saussine shows how the church redefined its relationship to the state in the long wake of the French Revolution. Disenfranchised by the fall of the monarchy, the church in France at first embraced that most conservative of ideologies, "ultramontanism" (an emphasis on the central role of the papacy). Catholics whose church had lost its national status henceforth looked to the papacy for spiritual authority. Perreau-Saussine argues that this move paradoxically combined a fundamental repudiation of the liberal political order with an implicit acknowledgment of one of its core principles, the autonomy of the church from the state. However, as Perreau-Saussine shows, in the context of twentieth-century totalitarianism, the Catholic Church retrieved elements of its Gallican heritage and came to embrace another liberal (and Gallican) principle, the autonomy of the state from the church, for the sake of its corollary, freedom of religion. Perreau-Saussine concludes that Catholics came to terms with liberal democracy, though not without abiding concerns about the potential of that system to compromise freedom of religion in the pursuit of other goals.
Download or read book The Lost Tools of Learning written by Dorothy L. Sayers and published by Fig. This book was released on 1948 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
