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Essays

These Threads Who Lead to Bramble

These Threads Who Lead to Bramble

Persson, Russell
$17.95
Russell Persson's These Threads Who Lead to Bramble defies the singularity of any one genre as it braids together memory and myth to challenge the limits of our collective imagination

This is a book that contains multitudes--a celebration of the forgotten marginalia of Westernized thought. Persson's collection delves into eccentric twentieth-century American photographers, the lives of his ancestors both distant and recent, and of the artist Egon Schiele in prison, teetering on the edge of sanity. He interweaves the careers of three obscure composers--Alban Berg, Erik Satie, and Anton Webern--and imagines the composer's life based on listening to their music, rather than the other way around. And he charts the path of his own life from a long-ago teenage road trip, sleeping in the backs of friends' cars and trying to find himself inside a vast world.

As the work builds, the lines between personal memory and collective history become ever more abstract, blending inner and outer spheres to confront the unknowable expanse of universal existence. A must-read for fans of Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, and W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz.

This work includes black-and-white reproductions of Egon Schiele's drawings, with permission from The ALBERTINA Museum in Vienna.

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes

Robinson, Phoebe
$27.00
"[A]nother hilarious essay collection from Phoebe Robinson."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Strikes the perfect balance of brutally honest and laugh out loud funny. I didn't want it to end."
--Mindy Kaling, New York Times bestselling author of Why Not Me?

With sharp, timely insight, pitch-perfect pop culture references, and her always unforgettable voice, New York Times bestselling author, comedian, actress, and producer Phoebe Robinson is back with her most must-read book yet.


In her brand-new collection, Phoebe shares stories that will make you laugh, but also plenty that will hit you in the heart, inspire a little bit of rage, and maybe a lot of action. That means sharing her perspective on performative allyship, white guilt, and what happens when white people take up space in cultural movements; exploring what it's like to be a woman who doesn't want kids living in a society where motherhood is the crowning achievement of a straight, cis woman's life; and how the dire state of mental health in America means that taking care of one's mental health--aka "self-care"--usually requires disposable money.

She also shares stories about her mom slow-poking before a visit with Mrs. Obama, the stupidly fake reassurances of zip-line attendants, her favorite things about dating a white person from the UK, and how the lack of Black women in leadership positions fueled her to become the Black lady boss of her dreams. By turns perceptive, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartfelt, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes is not only a brilliant look at our current cultural moment, it's also a collection that will stay with readers for years to come.

Little Gaelic Kingdom

Little Gaelic Kingdom

Robinson, Tim
$20.00

"A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing, and an incomparable and enthralling meditation on times past."--John Banville

"He knows this world as no one else does, and writes about it with awe and love, but also with measured grace, an artist's eye and a scientist's sensibility."--Colm Tóibín

In its landscape, history, language, and folklore, the Connemara region on Ireland's wild and windswept West Coast is a dramatic and breathtaking place. From its fabled villages, seaside cliffs, bogs, lakes, coral beaches, stark mountains, and ever-meandering country roads lined with stone walls, this rugged kingdom surprises and inspires, and nobody knows this more than artist, cartographer, and celebrated writer Tim Robinson.

In A Little Gaelic Kingdom, Robinson brings this enchanting Irish peninsula rapturously to life. Setting off, he embarks on a walking journey, traversing and exploring the natural world, while revealing the history, mystery, language, and people that have indelibly shaped this much-mythologized countryside. From the glacial valley of Maam to the fishing villages and rocky shorelines of the region's archipelago, Robinson carries encyclopedic knowledge, great curiosity, and a deep love of place and its inhabitants with him on this engaging and evocative journey.

Beautifully crafted and intimately rendered, A Little Gaelic Kingdom is a timeless and revelatory work of travel and nature writing.

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Even More) Expanded Third Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live by

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Even More) Expanded Third Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live by

Vonnegut, Kurt
$19.95
A collection of 15 graduation speeches and treasured wisdom from the New York Times-bestselling literary icon and author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions

"Like [that of] his literary ancestor Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut's crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted."--A.O. Scott, The New York Times Book Review

Master storyteller and satirist Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most in-demand commencement speakers of his time. His words were unfailingly insightful and witty, and they stayed with audience members long after graduation. Chosen and introduced by fellow novelist and friend Dan Wakefield, a selection of speeches and essays in this expanded 3rd edition include:

- "What to Do When You Have the Power; In the Meantime, Remember to Skylark!"
- "Why Social Justice Does More Than Art to Nourish the American Dream"
- "How to Make Money and Find Love!"
- "Somebody Should've Told Me Not to Join a Fraternity"
- "How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don't"

Hilarious, razor-sharp, freewheeling, and at times deeply serious, these reflections are ideal not just for graduates but for anyone undergoing what Vonnegut would call their "long-delayed puberty ceremony"--marking the long and challenging passage to full-time adulthood.

Bryn says: Give this to anybody who is graduating. Better yet, give this to anybody who could use a good talking-to. Let Vonnegut pass on the wisest of words with zero pretense, leaving readers feeling joyful and hopeful (two things everyone could use a little more of).

White Magic

White Magic

Washuta, Elissa
$26.95

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, "starter witch kits" of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life--Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham--to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule.

Black Friend

Black Friend

Ziwe
$16.00
From the writer crowned one of the smartest, funniest voices in modern America, this hotly anticipated debut collection of essays offers "a precious glimpse into how Ziwe's uniquely fearless mind functions" (New York)

Ziwe made a name for herself staring interviewees in the eye and asking, "How many Black friends do you have?" She's an expert at making people squirm, coming right out and asking the tough questions about race and racism that our culture has made white people experts at dancing around.

In Black Friend, she turns this incisive perspective on the culture at large, with her signature blend of bluntness and warmth that keeps her guests coming back. Throughout the book, Ziwe mixes big-picture concepts like critical race theory and white privilege with pop-culture commentary and her own personal life story. From a cringe-inducing story of mistaken identity via a Jumbotron to an all-too-real fight-or-flight encounter in the woods, Ziwe tackles questions about race head on and in a manner that evokes the way it comes up in the real world--not through deliberate studies of history and theory, which are so important, but in an awkward conversation at a party or a "yikes" comment from a coworker in the break room. The book lives in the moment of discomfort that can be the most truly educational way of unlearning biases. Plus, like everything Ziwe does, it will startle you with how much it makes you laugh.