Essential Non-Fiction by Notable Fiction Writers
Discover essential non-fiction books written by notable fiction writers. Explore insightful works that showcase the versatility and depth of your favorite authors beyond their novels.
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The Innocents Abroad
by Mark Twain
Being some account of the steamship quaker city's pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; with descriptions of countries, nations, incidents and adventures, as they appeared to the author.
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Selected Non-Fictions
by Jorge Luis Borges
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism The first comprehensive selection in any language of the non-fiction--much of it appearing here in English for the first time--of “one of literature’s most fertile and original minds” (San Francisco Chronicle) A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper It will come as a surprise to many readers that the greater part of Jorge Luis Borges’s extraordinary writing was not in the genres of fiction or poetry, but in various forms of non-fiction prose. His thousands of pages of essays, reviews, prologues, lectures, and notes on politics and culture—though revered in Latin America and Europe as among his finest work—have scarcely been translated into English. Selected Non-Fictions presents a Borges almost entirely unknown to American readers. Here is the dazzling metaphysician speculating on the nature of time and reality and the inventions of heaven and hell, and the almost superhumanly erudite reader of the world’s literatures, from Homer to Ray Bradbury, James Joyce to Lady Murasaki. Here, too, the political Borges, taking courageous stands against fascism, antisemitism, and the Perón dictatorship; Borges the movie critic, on King Kong and Citizen Kane and the Borgesian art of dubbing; and Borges the regular columnist for the Argentine equivalent of the Ladies’ Home Journal, writing hilarious book reviews and capsule biographies of modern writers. Like the Aleph in his famous story—the magical point in a basement in Buenos Aires from which one can view everything in the world—Borges’s non-fictions are a vortex for seemingly the entire universe: Dante and Ellery Queen, Shakespeare and the Kabbalah, the history of angels and the history of tango, the Buddha, Bette Davis, and the Dionne Quints. Selected Non-Fictions presents more than 160 of these astonishing writings, from his youthful manifestos to his last meditations on his favorite books. More than a hundred of these pieces have never before appeared in English, and all have been rendered in brilliant new translations by Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Eliot Weinberger. This unique selection presents Borges as at once a deceptively self-effacing guide to the universe and the inventor of a universe that is an indispensable guide to Borges. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Life on the Mississippi
by Mark Twain
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
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Lost in the Cosmos
by Walker Percy
Explores human nature and presents insights on the self and its fears, sexuality, boredom, depression, and other aspects.
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The Kingdom of God is Within You
by graf Leo Tolstoy
First published in Germany in 1894, after being banned in Russia, The Kingdom of God Is within You reveals Tolstoy’s world outlook after his conversion to Christianity. He argues that the kingdom of God is within reach of all. The core of the book deals with his nonresistance to evil, a principle Tolstoy passionately advocated. Gandhi was won over by the book. Tolstoy clearly describes the hazards that bullying governments and false beliefs produced. “The situation of the Christian part of humanity—with its prisons, forced labor, gallows, saloons, brothels, constantly increasing armaments, and millions of confused people ready like trained hounds to attack anyone against whom their masters set them—this situation would be terrible if it were the product of coercion, but it is above all the product of public opinion.” Abhorring the violence of revolution, Tolstoy calls on Christians to remember that the only guide for their actions is to be found in the divine principle dwelling within them, which in no sense can be checked or governed by anyone or anything else.
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The Gospel in Brief
by graf Leo Tolstoy
?Are you acquainted with Tolstoy?s The Gospel in Brief? At its time, this book virtually kept me alive. . . . If you are not acquainted with it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon a person.??Ludwig Wittgenstein, in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker. ø The Gospel in Brief is Leo Tolstoy?s integration of the four biblical Gospels into a single account of the life of Jesus. Inspired in large measure by Tolstoy?s meticulous study of the original Greek versions of the Bible, The Gospel in Brief is a highly original fusion of biblical texts and Tolstoy?s own influential religious views. ø Tolstoy explains that his goal is a solution to ?the problem of life,? not an answer to theological or historical questions. As a result, he sets aside such issues as Jesus? genealogy and divinity, or whether Jesus in fact walked on water. Instead, he focuses on the words and teachings of Jesus, stripped of what Tolstoy regarded as the Church?s distortions and focus on dogma and ritual. The result is a work that emphasizes the individual?s spiritual condition in a chaotic and indifferent world. ø Like Tolstoy?s celebrated literary achievements, The Gospel in Brief has the distinct bearing of a classic: in its urgency and directness it is remarkably current, as if it were written only yesterday rather than a century ago.
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Travels with Charley in Search of America
by John Steinbeck
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.
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Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
by Henry Miller
One of Henry Miller's most luminous statements of his personal philosophy of life, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, provides a symbolic title for this collection of stories and essays. Many of them have appeared only in foreign magazines while others were printed in small limited editions which have gone out of print. Miller's genius for comedy is at its best in "Money and How It Gets That Way"--a tongue-in-cheek parody of "economics" provoked by a postcard from Ezra Pound which asked if he "ever thought about money." His deep concern for the role of the artist in society appears in "An Open Letter to All and Sundry," and in "The Angel is My Watermark" he writes of his own passionate love affair with painting. "The Immorality of Morality" is an eloquent discussion of censorship. Some of the stories, such as "First Love," are autobiographical, and there are portraits of friends, such as "Patchen: Man of Anger and Light," and essays on other writers such as Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Sherwood Anderson and Ionesco. Taken together, these highly readable pieces reflect the incredible vitality and variety of interests of the writer who extended the frontiers of modern literature with Tropic of Cancer and other great books.
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Misreadings
by Umberto Eco
Playful parodies by the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Here, Eco pokes fun at the oversophisticated, overacademic, and overintellectual, and along the way makes penetrating comments about our modern mass culture and the elitist avant-garde in art in criticism.
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How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays
by Umberto Eco
Offers essays on militarism, computerese, art, bureaucracy, health, airplane food, bad coffee, taxi drivers, fax machines, porno films, football fans, and other topics
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Following the Equator
by Mark Twain
Illustrated journal of his trip across America, to the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa
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RLS, Selected Essays
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Sixteen provocative and charming essays by the author of Treasure Island, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde warning about the dangers of socialism.
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Signposts in a Strange Land
by Walker Percy
At his death in 1990, Walker Percy left a considerable legacy of uncollected nonfiction. Assembled in Signposts in a Strange Land, these essays on language, literature, philosophy, religion, psychiatry, morality, and life and letters in the South display the imaginative versatility of an author considered by many to be one the greatest modern American writers.
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A Trail of Memories
by Angelique L'Amour
For decades, generations of readers have shared their favorite passages of favorite Louis L'Amour novels and short stories: parents with their children, neighbors with their friends, executives with their staff and clergy with their congregations. They pass around dog-eared copies of the books, underlined and yellowing, recalling words that echoes in their readers' hearts and minds long after the last page was turned. Now, many of these selections have been collected in a remarkable volume representing some of the richest ore of the L'Amour lode: voices that heralded the settling of the frontier, of the man and women whose spirit and soul shaped our nation. In these words, Louis L'Amour describes the American experience, bringing our heritage to life, in ways no other author has. No L'Amour reader has a more unique perspective on his work than Angelique, his only daughter. In an extraordinary feat for every Louis L'Amour fan, and in loving appreciation of her father, she has compiled A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L'Amour, drawn from her father's best-loved works of fiction, including the Sackett novels, Last of the Breed, The Walking Drum and nearly two dozen others. "By reading his words, each reader has met a part of my father," she writes in her introduction. "Each hero has a bit of Dad's experience that makes him who he is. With Lanso, it is all those boxing matches as Dad grew up. With Barnabas Sackett, it is the sailor and explorer in my father...I think that this collection of quotations from my father's books reveals much of what makes Dad who he is, for these words are the heart and soul of what he believes, and what he wants to leave behind." Angelique has selected nearly a thousand of her favorite, most powerful and poignant L'Amour quotations--arranged by category and annotated with the book in which it appears--on more than a score of universal subjects such as: Love, Friendship and Loyalty; Family and Home; Honor, the Law and Justice; the Frontier; Women; and Men and Bravery. One such example from Sackett's Land: "He never knew when he was whipped--so he never was." A wonderful gift from a daughter to her father--and from Angelique L'Amour to her father's readers--A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L'Amour will be a cherished keepsake of words to enjoy, and words to live by.