Washoe County Library System

"'In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.' So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which beloved poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of literature....

A new collection of essays by the humorist author traces his offbeat world travel experiences, which involved surreal encounters with everything from French dentistry and Australian kookaburra eating habits to Beijing squat toilets and a wilderness Costco in North Carolina.

"In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. In “We Kin,” Gay thinks about the garden (es­pecially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come in) as a laboratory...

With a skewed sense of wit uniquely his own, satirist and popular NPR storyteller David Sedaris presents a collection of short stories and essays, wherein home surgery and an elf-abusing Santa prevail. A satirical look at modern culture. In Glen's Homophobia Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2, the author parodies the whining of minority groups, Diary of a Smoker tackles the persecution of smokers, and Santaland Diaries describes the author's experiences as...

The first posthumous publication from this literary icon, "Mind of an Outlaw" collects Mailer's most important and representative work.

"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...

In twenty-two wonderfully articulate essays, Barbara Kingsolver raises her voice in praise of nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the genesis of war, violence, and poverty in our world

From the author of High Tide in Tucson, comes Small Wonder, a new collection of essays that begins with a parable gleaned from recent news: villagers search for a missing infant boy and find him, unharmed,

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"The gripping articles collected in Classic Krakauer--originally published in magazines such as The New Yorker, Outside, and Smithsonian--show why he is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism. Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these pieces take us from a horrifying avalanche on Mount Everest to a volcano poised to obliterate a big chunk of Seattle; from a wilderness teen-therapy program run by apparent sadists to...

E. L. Doctorow is acclaimed internationally for such novels as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March. Now here are Doctorow’s rich, revelatory essays on the nature of imaginative thought. In Creationists, Doctorow considers creativity in its many forms: from the literary (Melville and Mark Twain) to the comic (Harpo Marx) to the cosmic (Genesis and Einstein). As he wrestles with the subjects that have teased and fired his...