"Combining personal reflection and social observation, Bret Easton Ellis's first work of nonfiction is an incendiary polemic about this young century's failings, e-driven and otherwise, and at once an example, definition, and defense of what 'freedom of speech' truly means. Bret Easton Ellis has wrestled with the double-edged sword of fame and notoriety for more than thirty years now, since Less Than Zero catapulted him into the limelight in 1985,...

Essayist Christopher Hitchens ruminates on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men, the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard, the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell, the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad, the enduring relevance of Karl Marx, and how politics justifies itself by culture--and how the latter prompts the former.

In essays on subjects ranging from seahorse mating rituals to an urgent letter addressing a grizzly bear, from a wounded hummingbird to an old woman following the call of a lonely whale, Jessica Lind Peterson explores tensions between domesticity and wildness, often discovering latent elements of magic within the mundane.

From literary icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of nonfiction -- funny, erudite, intimate, impassioned, and always startlingly prescient -- which grapples with such wide-ranging topics as: Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? How do we get rid of the immense amount of plastic that's littering our seas and lands? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? Is science fiction now writing us? So what...

A collection of essays follows the author as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor; her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her; and the responsibility she has inherited from the great thinkers and writers of the past.

In recent years, Minneapolis has become a literary powerhouse. Under Purple Skies: The Minneapolis Anthology collects some of the most exciting work being done in, or about, Minneapolis and the Twin Cities area, with narrative threads that stretch back not just to Scandinavia, but across the world. The writers here have won, or been shortlisted for, the Newbery Award, the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer, the Caldecott Award, the National Book Award,...

Contains short autobiographical essays, musings, stories, observations, and advice.