NCW Libraries

In recognition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's long and lauded career as a master essayist, a landmark collection, including her most beloved pieces and some rarely seen work, rigorously curated by the author herself.

"A charming, poignant, unfiltered, laugh-out-loud memoir in essays from beloved actor and natural-born storyteller Minnie Driver, chronicling the way life works out even when it doesn't"--

"From a celebrated writer on the outdoors, hilarious stories about the joys and pitfalls of hunting, fishing, family, and adventure" -- Amazon.com. "For more than twenty years, Bill Heavey--- a three-time National Magazine Award finalist--- has staked a claim as one of America's best writers. In feature stories and his Field & Stream column, 'A Sportsman's Life,' as well as other publications, he has taken readers across the country and beyond to...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This essay collection from the “bitches gotta eat” blogger, writer on Hulu’s Shrill and HBO's And Just Like That, and “one of our country’s most fierce and foulmouthed authors” (Amber Tamblyn, Vulture) is sure to make you alternately cackle with glee and cry real tears.
"A sidesplitting polemicist for the most awful situations.”—The...

"An anthology of short, intimate second-person essays by a diverse range of writers, each honoring a fleeting encounter with a stranger met while traveling that left a profound and lasting impact; with a foreword by bestselling author Leslie Jamison"--

"Hell hath no fury like an ex-Bible-Belter-turned-New-Yorker. To see the world through comedian and writer Zach Zimmerman's eyes is to be reminded of the many ways in which love, religion, family, sex, money-or often lack thereof-lay bare our most elemental and embarrassing humanness. From meditations on heartbreak to not-so-helpful how-tos, this laugh-and-cry-out-loud essay collection documents one man's navigation through queerness, climbing the...

"From the universally acclaimed, best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: ten pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. Here are six pieces written in 1968 from the "Points West" Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband, John Gregory Dunne about: American newspapers; a session with Gamblers Anonymous;...

Married to an evangelical paster's son with a comfortable life, the author describes her reckoning with religious trauma and Midwestern values as she shed years of indoctrination, piety, and repression and came out as queer, and discusses how evangelicalism has undermined American political power structures.

"A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as mindfulness, decluttering, David Cronenberg, and consent. In her debut essay collection, "brilliant and stylish" (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a...

"Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays contains sixteen pieces that encompass the philosophy, ethic, and aesthetic of Robert Michael Pyle. The essays range from Pyle?s experience as a young national park ranger in the Sierra Nevada to the streets of Manhattan; from the suburban jungle to the tangles of the written word; and from the phenomenon of Bigfoot to that of the Big Year?a personal exercise in extreme birding and butterflying. They include...