Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere
10 best books like Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (Christopher Hitchens): The Born Again Skeptic's Guide To The Bible, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, My Country Right or Left: 1940-1943, The Meaning of Life, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War, The Thomas Paine Reader, The Night Is Large: Collected Essays, 1938-1995, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero & Myth-maker from the Crimea to Iraq, The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11, United States: Essays 1952-1992
| Author | Ruth Hurmence Green |
| ISBN | 1877733016 |
Life is unfair, unpredictable, and sometimes brutal. Humans look for an explanation, and think that there may be a being, or beings, behind mysterious events. The writers of the Old Testament found exactly the sort of God who would account for their beautiful, but chaotic, world. He was capricious...
| Author | Jeff Sharlet |
| ISBN | 0060559799 |
A journalist's penetrating look at the untold story of christian fundamentalism's most elite organization, a self-described invisible network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful.
They are the Family—fundamentalism's avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of...
My Country Right or Left: 1940-1943
| Author | George Orwell |
| ISBN | 1567921345 |
Orwell was a great thinker and a great writer. He had a tremendous memory and self deprecating wit. All of these qualities are on display here. While not as good as "Funny, But Not Vulgar," this is still an educational and often fun read.
It's important that Orwell reminds us that Nazis were Socialists,...
| Author | Terry Eagleton |
| ISBN | 0199210705 |
The phrase "the meaning of life" for many seems a quaint notion fit for satirical mauling by Monty Python or Douglas Adams. But in this spirited Very Short Introduction, famed critic Terry Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at the question and offers his own surprising answer.
Eagleton...
| Author | Edmund Wilson |
| ISBN | 0393312569 |
Patriotic Gore (1962) is the big book of Wilson’s final decade and in the dust jacket photo he looks just the toothless, growling old cuss one meets in “The Critic in Winter,” Updike’s worthwhile review of the late journals. Wilson spent his last summers in a decaying corner of Upstate New York,...
| Author | Thomas Paine |
| ISBN | 0140444963 |
This major collection demonstrates the extent to which Thomas Paine (1737—1809) was an inspiration to the Americans in their struggle for independence, a passionate supporter of the French Revolution and perhaps the outstanding English radical writer of his age. It contains all of Paine's key...
| Author | Martin Gardner |
| ISBN | 0312169493 |
In The Night Is Large, Martin Gardner has assembled forty-seven challenging and inquisitive essays into a work that places him at the heart of twentieth-century American intellectual culture. Delving into an immense range of topics, from philosophy and literature to social criticism to mathematics...
| Author | Phillip Knightley |
| ISBN | 0801880300 |
"The first casualty when war comes, is truth," said American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917. In his gripping, now-classic history of war journalism, Phillip Knightley shows just how right Johnson was. From William Howard Russell, who described the appalling conditions of the Crimean War in the Times...
| Author | Martin Amis |
| ISBN | 0224076108 |
"The English language bows deeper to Amis than anyone else." "The Daily Telegraph" (UK)
A master not only of fiction but also of fiercely controversial political engagement, Martin Amis here gathers fourteen pieces that constitute an evolving, provocative and insightful examination of the...
| Author | Gore Vidal |
| ISBN | 0767908066 |
From the age of Eisenhower to the dawning of the Clinton era, Gore Vidal’s United States offers an incomparably rich tapestry of American intellectual and political life in a tumultuous period. It also provides the best, most sustained exposure possible to the most wide-ranging, acute, and original...
The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible
| Author | Harold Bloom |
| ISBN | 0300166834 |
The King James Bible stands at "the sublime summit of literature in English," sharing the honor only with Shakespeare, Harold Bloom contends in the opening pages of this illuminating literary tour. Distilling the insights acquired from a significant portion of his career as a brilliant critic and...
Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature & the Social Order
It’s hard not to sound like a broken record when talking about Noam Chomsky. What can we say that hasn’t been said countless times before? The man has had such an influence and his books are simply imperative reading for any human being. Powers and Prospects collects Chomsky’s lectures in Australia...
| Author | Kathleen M. Higgins |
| ISBN | 1565853423 |
The best way to approach Nietzsche is to go straight to the well and drink deep of his original work, but it's not easy to get a handle on him this way. His thinking is not systematic, and he has no interest in conforming to conventional ways of doing philosophy. He prefers an oblique approach, so he writes...
| Author | Robert Atwan |
| ISBN | 0547394519 |
The provocative and best-selling author Christopher Hitchens takes the helm of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this perennial favorite that is reliable and yet still surprisingthe best of the best” (Kirkus Reviews).
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Stranger Shores: Essays 1986-1999
J. M. Coetzee is, without question, one of the world's greatest novelists. This volume gathers together for the first time in book form twenty-nine pieces on books, writing, photography and the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. Stranger Shores opens with 'What is a Classic?' in which Coetzee explores...
Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism
| Author | John Updike |
| ISBN | 0307957152 |
A collection both intimate and generous of the eloquent, insightful, beautifully written prose works that John Updike was compiling when he died in January 2009.
This collection of miscellaneous prose opens with a self-portrait of the writer in winter, a Prospero who, though he fears his...
The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism
| Author | Pascal Bruckner |
| ISBN | 0691143765 |
Fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, imperialism--the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt. And, indeed, since the Holocaust and the end of World War II, Europeans in particular have been consumed by remorse. But Pascal Bruckner argues that guilt has now gone too far. It has become...
| Author | Paul Strathern |
| ISBN | 1566631238 |
"Each of these little books is witty and dramatic and creates a sense of time, place, and character....I cannot think of a better way to introduce oneself and one's friends to Western civilization."--Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe. "Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about...
