Robert Atwan Livres

This work explores the relationship between writing style and target audiences across various media, including advertising, journalism, magazines, and literature, from 1492 to today. It features advertisements from diverse brands such as Modart, Listerine, Nike, and Coca-Cola, alongside organizations like the U.S. Army and the National Women's Political Caucus. The text includes contributions from a wide array of writers, including Marianne Moore, David Ogilvy, and Toni Morrison, showcasing their insights into the interplay of language and audience engagement. The examination spans numerous genres and formats, highlighting the evolution of communication strategies and their impact on public perception. Notable figures like Langston Hughes, Stephen King, and Maya Angelou are represented, reflecting the rich tapestry of American literary and cultural history. The book ultimately underscores how the nuances of language shape the way messages are crafted and received, revealing the intricate dance between style and audience throughout centuries of written expression.

This abridged one-volume edition collects poetry from the original two volumes of Chapters into Verse to survey the literary legacy of the Scriptures from the fourteenth century to the present.

For this singular collection, Joyce Carol Oates selected fifty-five unforgettable essays by the finest American writers of the twentieth century. Here is a sampling -- twelve unabridged essays -- featuring a wide variety of contemporary writers reading classics of the genre, along with authors reading their own work. Nothing less than a political, spiritual, and intensely personal record of America's tumultuous modern age, THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS OF THE CENTURY is "an outstanding, galvanic collection" (Entertainment Weekly).

Now in its twentieth year, this "consistently refined and lively series" (Booklist)still highlights "the best that the form can be" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Editedby the best-selling writer Susan Orlean, this year"s collection highlights lively and provocative writing for these difficult times. Contributors include Roger Angell, Andrea Barrett, David Sedaris, Holly Welker, and others.

Essays by Jean Ervin, Jacob Cohen, Ward Just, Floyd Skloot, Gerald Early, James Salter, Philip Weiss, Cynthia Ozick, Diane Johnson, Joseph Brodsky, Marcia Aldrich, Paul R. McHugh, Anthony Burgess, Daniel M. Harris, Robert Sherrill, Shaun O'Connell, Thomas C. Palmer, Lawrence Otis Graham, Scott Russell Sanders, and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison.

A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee. Alexander Chee, a "master artist" (Maris Kreizman, host of The Maris Review) of the personal essay, selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

Since 1986, The Best American Essays has gathered the most interesting and provocative writing of the year, establishing a firm place as the leading annual of its kind. The volume is edited each year by an esteemed writer who brings a fresh eye to the selections. Previous editors have included Elizabeth Hardwick, Susan Sontag, Geoffrey C. Ward, Cynthia Ozick, and Stephen Jay Gould. This year’s volume is terrifically diverse, with subjects ranging from driving lessons to animal rights to citizenship in times of emergency.

The twenty-two essays in this powerful collection -- perhaps the most diverse in the entire series -- come from a wide variety of periodicals, ranging from n + 1 and PMS to the New Republic and The New Yorker, and showcase a remarkable range of forms. Read on for narrative -- in first and third person -- opinion, memoir, argument, the essay-review, confession, reportage, even a dispatch from Iraq. The philosopher Peter Singer makes a case for philanthropy; the poet Molly Peacock constructs a mosaic tribute to a little-known but remarkable eighteenth-century woman artist; the novelist Marilynne Robinson explores what has happened to holiness in contemporary Christianity; the essayist Richard Rodriguez wonders if California has anything left to say to America; and the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson attempts to find common ground with the evangelical community.In his introduction, David Foster Wallace makes the spirited case that “many of these essays are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets -- whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids’ cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you’ve believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap.”

Presents an anthology of the best literary essays published in the past year, selected from American periodicals.