Gore Vidal, winner of the National Book Award, once again proves himself a provocative contemporary American critic. In this far-ranging collection of essays, he brings his keen intellect to a wide range of subjects--from profiles of Clare Boothe Luce and Charles Lindbergh, to provocative analyses of literary icons John Updike and Mark Twain.

For this collection, Wallace immerses himself in the three-ring circus that is the presidential race in order to document one of the most vicious campaigns in recent history. Later he strolls from booth to booth at a lobster festival in Maine and risks life and limb to get to the bottom of the lobster question. Then he wheedles his way into an L.A. radio studio, armed with tubs of chicken, to get the behind-the-scenes view of a conservative talk show...

This collection of Ursula K. Le Guin's recent talks, essays, introductions is the best manual we have for exploring the worlds explored in recent fiction; the most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.

Essays revisiting themes the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist, and activist has addressed throughout her career, exploring her conflicting impulses to retreat into inner contemplation and to remain deeply engaged with the world: racism, Africa, solidarity with the Palestinian people, the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, Cuba, health care, and the work of Aung San Suu Kyi.

"The first collection from a Whiting Writers' Award winner whose work has become a fixture of The Paris Review and n+1. Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J.D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience -- as a janitor, a night watchman, an adjunct professor, a drunk, an exterminator, a dutiful son -- he considers how far books...

"Engaging, unusual essays written over the last two decades, on matters literary, social, cultural, and personal--from the explosive date rape debates of the '90s to the ubiquitous political adultery of the '00s, from Anton Chekhov to Celine Dion. Here is Mary Gaitskill the essayist: witty, direct, penetrating to the core of each issue, personality, or literary trope (On Updike: "It is as if [he] has entered a tiny window marked 'Rabbit,' and, by...

In 1965, John McPhee published his first book, "A Sense of Where You Are"; a decade later, he had published eleven others. This reader is comprised of selections from those first twelve books.