""Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores "what it means to be seen, to find someone...

Well-known works including fables, folklore, fiction, drama, and more, by such authors as Aesop, Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and Baldwin, are presented to teach virtues, including compassion, courage, honesty, friendship, and faith

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...

"Christian Wiman, a thinker "at the very source of theology" (Marilynne Robinson), braids poetry, memoir, and criticism to create an inspired, career-defining work"-- Few contemporary writers ask the questions about faith, morality, and God that Christian Wiman does, and even fewer--perhaps none--do so with his urgency and eloquence. Wiman, an award-winning poet and the author of My Bright Abyss, lays the motion of his mind on the page in this genre-defying...

Karr breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, opening our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminating the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.

Many great artists have had at least intermittent doubts about their own abilities. But The Education of Henry Adams is surely one of the few masterpieces to issue directly from a raging inferiority complex. The author, to be sure, had bigger shoes to fill than most of us. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather were U.S. presidents. His father, a relative underachiever, scraped by as a member of Congress and ambassador to the Court of St. James....

A culinary legend tells his story, from boyhood in wartime France to stardom in America, and shares favorite recipes: “A delicious book…a joy.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
In this memoir, the man Julia Child called “the best chef in America” tells of his rise from a frightened apprentice in an exacting Old World kitchen to an Emmy Award-winning superstar who taught millions...

"[Our Town] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth." — The New Yorker

Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire—an allegorical representation of all life—is an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless

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“Familiar Studies of Men and Books” is a collection of essays by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The essays reflect Stevenson's opinions and observations on various aspects of literature and the human condition. They showcase his wit, wisdom, and style and demonstrate why he was one of the most popular writers of his time. In the essays, Stevenson discusses authors and works he admired, reflects on his own writing process, and offers insights...