Helen Plum Library

"A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz "The world is abundant even in bad times,"guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, "it is lush with interestingness,and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness."The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that...

A hilarious and affecting essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson Being a Black woman in American means contending with old prejudices and fresh absurdities. Robinson uses her trademark wit to explore examine our cultural climate and skewer our biases with humor and heart

"A fearless and darkly comic essay collection about race, justice, and the limits of good intentions. In this stunning debut collection, Catapult editor-in-chief and award-winning voice actor Tajja Isen explores the absurdity of living in a world that has grown fluent in the language of social justice but doesn't always follow through. These nine daring essays explore the sometimes troubling and often awkward nature of that discord. Some of My Best...

"Waveform: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women celebrates the role of women essayists in contemporary literature. Historically, women have been instrumental in moving the essay to center stage, and Waveform continues this rich tradition, further expanding the dynamic genre's boundaries and testing its edges. With thirty essays by thirty distinguished and diverse women writers, this carefully constructed anthology incorporates works ranging from the...

Anne Frank's written works other than her diary, collected in a new translation

A collection of essential writings features Thoreau's poetry and essays on nature, materialism, conformity, and politics; including such works as "Slavery in Massachusetts," "Civil Disobedience," "A Winter Walk," and "Life Without Principle."

"A collection of essential poems, essays, letters, songs, and photographs which aims to introduce new readers to the scope of Allen Ginsberg's work in its prolific and profound diversity"--

In this essay -- adapted from her TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now -- and an of-the-moment...

"A new book of essays by the cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Queen's Throat and Jackie Under My Skin"--