The Best American Essays of the Century
HarperCollins · Print & ebook · October 10, 2001
A Essays pick for readers exploring The Best American Essays of the Century.
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- Who it’s for
- These essays move from intimate experience toward the larger questions of a tumultuous American century.
- Themes
- American modern history, Political and spiritual life, Personal experience
- Genres
- Essay Collections, American Literary Collections, Social Science Essays
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For younger readers: Who Do You Think You Are?, Stupid Black Girl, 1968: Today's Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change
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Start with this bookAbout this book
This singular collection is nothing less than a political, spiritual, and intensely personal record of America’s tumultuous modern age, as experienced by our foremost critics, commentators, activists, and artists. Joyce Carol Oates has collected a group of works that are both intimate and important, essays that move from personal experience to larger significance without severing the connection between speaker and audience.
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From Ernest Hemingway covering bullfights in Pamplona to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” these essays fit, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, “into a kind of mobile mosaic suggest[ing] where we’ve come from, and who we are, and where we are going.” Among those whose work is included are Mark Twain, John Muir, T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Joan Didion, Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Hoagland, and Annie Dillard.
Private to Public
These essays move from intimate experience toward the larger questions of a tumultuous American century.
Come here for
- Personal reflection alongside political and spiritual concerns
- A wide-ranging mix of critics, commentators, activists, and artists
Expect
- Essays that connect speaker and audience
- A mosaic of perspectives on America’s past, present, and future
Where it sits
| Essay Collections | 96% |
|---|---|
| American Literary Collections | 64% |
| Social Science Essays | 40% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Literary Graphic Novels
- Fantasy Anthologies
- Literary Fiction
- Mystery Anthologies
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- Sci-Fi Short Stories
- Short Stories (Single Author)
- Crime Fiction
- Noir Fiction
- Authors
- Joyce Carol Oates
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Published
- October 10, 2001
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- American modern history · Political and spiritual life · Personal experience
- Reading lane
- Literary Graphic Novels