Some fifty of the finest personal essays selected by the man often hailed as the "premier essayist of our time." In this anthology of twentieth-century essays, some of our most-admired American and British writers express their lively, candid, entertaining, thoughtful, and--above all--various opinions. Topics range from Tangier to a lake in Maine, from racial conflict to sky diving, from the expectations we bring to travel to the athletics of the table. The essays are selected and introduced by Joseph Epstein, himself a leading contemporary practitioner of the form. Most prominent in each essay is the distinctive style of the essayist; style, as Epstein points out in his introduction, is not only what keeps literature alive but also a personal way of looking at the world. Blending the profound and the buoyant, the traditional and the new, the expected and the surprising, The Norton Book of Personal Essays offers a basketful of delights sure to find a permanent place on readers' shelves. Mark Twain, Max Beerbohm, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, M. F. K. Fisher, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. B. White, Oliver Sacks, H. L. Mencken, Truman Capote, and Flannery O'Connor are among the contributors to this volume. The chief principle of selection has been the pleasure that essays, operating at their highest power, always give. This amazing collection consists of talented writers approaching highly personal subjects. Dorothy Parker is not terribly pleased about turning 40. A. J. Liebling holds forth on having a good appetite. Zora Neale Hurston meditates on the color of her skin and what that means. Flannery O'Connor writes with introspection about raising peacocks on her farm. John Gregory Dunne discusses his feelings about adopting a daughter with his wife, Joan Didion. More than 50 selections can be found in The Norton Book of Personal Essays , and the roster of writers couldn't be more impressive. The appeal of personal essays stems in part from their directness, their "shameless subjectivity." As the editor of the American Scholar and the author of five collections of essays, Epstein is eminently qualified to select and introduce 53 personal essays written in English by well-known authors during the past century. They were chosen because he "found them interesting, touching, pleasing, amusing, delightful?above all, entertaining." The result is a potpourri of selections that vary widely in subject and style. Topics range from music, racism, and traveling to fathers, children, and childhood. Among the selections are Dorothy Parker's witty diatribe on reaching middle age and historian Barbara Tuchman's reflections about the curious letters she receives from her readers. While not all essays in this anthology will appeal to everyone, readers have a nice variety to choose from. Recommended for general literature collections.?Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, Tex. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Essay anthologies have become increasingly popular, as evident by the success, for instance, of the annual Best American Essay series, and now Epstein adds to the shelf a felicitous collection of works by more than 50 outstanding twentieth-century American and British writers. A fine essayist in his own right and author of several collections, including With My Trousers Rolled (1995), Epstein ponders the status of the essay in his introduction, surmising that it is the ideal form for "ages of transition and uncertain values," clearly an apt description for the present. Epstein also opines that a number of writers revered for their novels are actually better essayists, such as George Orwell, James Baldwin, and Joan Didion. Without a doubt, the essay is the ideal vehicle for all the writers represented here, including the aforementioned as well as M. F. K. Fisher, Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara Tuchman, Truman Capote, Lewis Thomas, and Cynthia Ozick. Donna Seaman Joseph Epstein has been the editor of the American Scholar since 1975. His own books of essays include The Middle of My Tether , Once More Around the Block , A Line Out for a Walk , Pertinent Players , and With My Trousers Rolled (all published by Norton). He was guest editor for Best American Essays (1993) and teaches at Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.