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Frog: And Other Essays
A new collection of evocative personal essays from one of America’s most beloved nonfiction writers, Anne Fadiman.
In Frog, Anne Fadiman returns to her favorite genre, the essay, of which she is one of our most celebrated practitioners. Ranging in subject matter from her deceased frog, to archaic printer technology, to the fraught relationship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his son Hartley, these essays unlock a whole world—one overflowing with mundanity and oddity—through sly observation and brilliant wit.
The diverse subjects of Frog are bound together by the quality of Fadiman’s attention, and subtly, they come to form a slantwise portrait of the artist, a writer dedicated to chronicling the world as it changes around her, in ways small and large, as time passes.
In Frog, Anne Fadiman returns to her favorite genre, the essay, of which she is one of our most celebrated practitioners. Ranging in subject matter from her deceased frog, to archaic printer technology, to the fraught relationship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his son Hartley, these essays unlock a whole world—one overflowing with mundanity and oddity—through sly observation and brilliant wit.
The diverse subjects of Frog are bound together by the quality of Fadiman’s attention, and subtly, they come to form a slantwise portrait of the artist, a writer dedicated to chronicling the world as it changes around her, in ways small and large, as time passes.
193 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 10, 2026
About the author
Anne Fadiman
47 books681 followersAnne Fadiman is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Frog (2026). Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Salon Book Award. In 2017, she published The Wine Lover’s Daughter, a memoir about her father. Fadiman has also written two essay collections, Ex Libris and At Large and At Small, and edited Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love. She is Professor in the Practice of English and Francis Writer in Residence at Yale.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews
September 10, 2025
Anne Fadiman just might be my favorite living essayist (I gift “Ex Libris” to pretty much every bookish person I know). There’s something jewel-like about her writing; the longer you look at it and the more closely you examine it, the more evident the precision and sheer craftsmanship that go into every line and line break become. And her humor! I’m convinced even her grocery lists must be funny. Every essay in this newest collection is stellar, but my particular favorites were “The Oakling and the Oak” and “South Polar Times.”
Many thanks to FSG for the advanced copy. I can’t wait to push this book on everyone I know when it comes out next February!
Many thanks to FSG for the advanced copy. I can’t wait to push this book on everyone I know when it comes out next February!
February 13, 2026
The great essayist Anne Fadiman has a new collection out, and it was even more of a joy than I was expecting. From pets to printers to coming to terms with the singular pronoun "them" as a prescriptive grammarian (as someone who also loves to diagram sentences, I see her), it is a joy to read Fadiman think and analyze and open herself up to a changing world. A gift of a book.
February 16, 2026
I read so many essays for school that I, maybe subconsciously, don’t venture into this form of writing in my non-school books. Fadiman’s newest collection, Frog, reminds me that it is to my detriment that my reading is imbalanced. I believe three main elements coalesce together, making it a pleasant read.
(1) The author’s thoughts and thoroughly researched topics are carefully conveyed with a wise, even, and accurate voice that also portrays humility. For example, her biography of the poet Hartley Coleridge (d. 1849) in The Oakling and the Oak seeks to correct an inaccurate depiction of the writer. (2) The author loves grammar and writes about teaching it. With sophisticated ease in All My Pronouns, Fadiman maneuvers between the dangling participle splitter and the gender neutral singular they. She marks language’s evolution, and how she has had to change with it, including a historical shift within Harvard Div. In the end, if they isn’t used universally for all people, then she suggests making gender less culturally central. This was my second favorite essay. (3) My favorite was Screen Share. In it, the author demonstrates her respect for her students and her craft as she serves as the Francis Writer in Residence at Yale.
Perhaps I may have enjoyed this book even more if Fadiman tied the essays together with similar themes. Perhaps the work comes together just fine because Fadiman authors the pieces.
My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.
(1) The author’s thoughts and thoroughly researched topics are carefully conveyed with a wise, even, and accurate voice that also portrays humility. For example, her biography of the poet Hartley Coleridge (d. 1849) in The Oakling and the Oak seeks to correct an inaccurate depiction of the writer. (2) The author loves grammar and writes about teaching it. With sophisticated ease in All My Pronouns, Fadiman maneuvers between the dangling participle splitter and the gender neutral singular they. She marks language’s evolution, and how she has had to change with it, including a historical shift within Harvard Div. In the end, if they isn’t used universally for all people, then she suggests making gender less culturally central. This was my second favorite essay. (3) My favorite was Screen Share. In it, the author demonstrates her respect for her students and her craft as she serves as the Francis Writer in Residence at Yale.
Perhaps I may have enjoyed this book even more if Fadiman tied the essays together with similar themes. Perhaps the work comes together just fine because Fadiman authors the pieces.
My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.
March 22, 2026
So happy to have been introduced to this author! Do not neglect to read the introduction (which was the last chapter in the audiobook).
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July 17, 2026adored! thanks netgalley and fsg for the digital arc!
this collection of essays found me at just the right time. there was only one that i didn't really connect with, but even then, i still found it worth reading. it was just hard to measure up to the rest of absolute heaters in this collection. the titular frog essay was so oddly moving to me. there is a piece about teaching during the pandemic that absolutely rocketed me back in time to when i was finishing my undergrad degree online during the pandemic from my childhood bedroom. there is also an essay on pronouns that just about moved me to tears.
i have never encountered anne fadiman's work before now, but i'm so glad that my interest in frogs was enough to lead me to this essay collection. instantly one of my fav reads of the year!
this collection of essays found me at just the right time. there was only one that i didn't really connect with, but even then, i still found it worth reading. it was just hard to measure up to the rest of absolute heaters in this collection. the titular frog essay was so oddly moving to me. there is a piece about teaching during the pandemic that absolutely rocketed me back in time to when i was finishing my undergrad degree online during the pandemic from my childhood bedroom. there is also an essay on pronouns that just about moved me to tears.
i have never encountered anne fadiman's work before now, but i'm so glad that my interest in frogs was enough to lead me to this essay collection. instantly one of my fav reads of the year!
November 22, 2025
This book was received as an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a honest review.
This review will be short- I enjoyed this book, same as I have enjoyed all of Anne Fadiman’s work. I’m generally not a huge fan of essays, but hers always touch me and while Frog is probably below Ex Libris on my ranking, it’s still a great read.
I may add to this review as I sit with what I’ve read, but the rating should remain the same.
This review will be short- I enjoyed this book, same as I have enjoyed all of Anne Fadiman’s work. I’m generally not a huge fan of essays, but hers always touch me and while Frog is probably below Ex Libris on my ranking, it’s still a great read.
I may add to this review as I sit with what I’ve read, but the rating should remain the same.
July 16, 2026
The best essays were undoubtedly the ones on her pet frog, Hartley Coleridge, and her late student Marina Keegan. I was less interested on her takes on pronouns, printers, and Zoom class, but when she’s good she’s good!
June 15, 2026
I admire her humor, her instinct to total and tally, and her expansive vocabulary. I liked half of the essays. Some pieces were pretentious, others boring, many both. The craft is there… content not so much.
March 4, 2026
This is a collection of seven essays by Anne Fadiman. They are about;
A frog her family kept as a pet for sixteen years and his death
Hartley Coleridge, the son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Computer printers she has owned
Her thoughts on using "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun.
The challenge of teaching a Yale University nonfiction writing class on Zoom during Covid.
An eight-issue newspaper that was published by South Pole explorers in 1902.
A memoir of one of her students.
They are all fascinating. These essays are personal in the best way without being confessional or self-involved. Fadiman writes personal essays that hit the sweet spot between giving us a feel of what she is like, how she thinks and what her prejudices and believes are, while at the same time providing interesting facts and thoughtful angles on what is under consideration.
The essay on the use of the singular "they" is starkly honest about how her love for the classic rules of grammar caused her to recoil at using a plural pronoun for a singular subject. She knows that her personal views and sympathies are in favor. She does a deep dive into the history of English pronouns and eventually satisfies her intellectual qualms, although she confesses that some usages still don't feel right to her grammarian streak.
She is a brilliant writer. She works at making her sentences clear and stylish, which are often conflicting goals. Reading her is fun.
She mentions party-store noisemakers that are "the kind with lizard-like paper tongues that make flatulent bleats when you blow them on New Year's Eve."
She says, about the Zoom backgrounds of her on-line students "If I squint, the Zoom grid looks like a haphazardly curated collection of Joseph Cornell boxes."
At their core, these are serious and inciteful essays. The frog essay opens up into big issues of responsibility and change, without ever explicitly saying it. The tragedy of Hartly Coleridge, son of a famous writer, necessarily bumps up against the fact that Anne Fadiman is the daughter of a well-known intellectual, Clifton Fadiman, and her mother was a successful writer. Fadiman is clear that her parents were not the irresponsible selfish types that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was.
This is a refreshingly short book that is worth savoring.
CONSUMER WARNING Do not read the introduction by Sam Anderson before you read the book. Anderson commits the horrible introducers crime of picking out many of the best lines and passages and giving us them as part of his discussion of what a great writer Fadiman is. The result is that when you come to them in the book, you don't get the pleasure of the new, you get the memory of having already read it. It is a good introduction, and it is perfectly ok to read it as an afterwards.
A frog her family kept as a pet for sixteen years and his death
Hartley Coleridge, the son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Computer printers she has owned
Her thoughts on using "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun.
The challenge of teaching a Yale University nonfiction writing class on Zoom during Covid.
An eight-issue newspaper that was published by South Pole explorers in 1902.
A memoir of one of her students.
They are all fascinating. These essays are personal in the best way without being confessional or self-involved. Fadiman writes personal essays that hit the sweet spot between giving us a feel of what she is like, how she thinks and what her prejudices and believes are, while at the same time providing interesting facts and thoughtful angles on what is under consideration.
The essay on the use of the singular "they" is starkly honest about how her love for the classic rules of grammar caused her to recoil at using a plural pronoun for a singular subject. She knows that her personal views and sympathies are in favor. She does a deep dive into the history of English pronouns and eventually satisfies her intellectual qualms, although she confesses that some usages still don't feel right to her grammarian streak.
She is a brilliant writer. She works at making her sentences clear and stylish, which are often conflicting goals. Reading her is fun.
She mentions party-store noisemakers that are "the kind with lizard-like paper tongues that make flatulent bleats when you blow them on New Year's Eve."
She says, about the Zoom backgrounds of her on-line students "If I squint, the Zoom grid looks like a haphazardly curated collection of Joseph Cornell boxes."
At their core, these are serious and inciteful essays. The frog essay opens up into big issues of responsibility and change, without ever explicitly saying it. The tragedy of Hartly Coleridge, son of a famous writer, necessarily bumps up against the fact that Anne Fadiman is the daughter of a well-known intellectual, Clifton Fadiman, and her mother was a successful writer. Fadiman is clear that her parents were not the irresponsible selfish types that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was.
This is a refreshingly short book that is worth savoring.
CONSUMER WARNING Do not read the introduction by Sam Anderson before you read the book. Anderson commits the horrible introducers crime of picking out many of the best lines and passages and giving us them as part of his discussion of what a great writer Fadiman is. The result is that when you come to them in the book, you don't get the pleasure of the new, you get the memory of having already read it. It is a good introduction, and it is perfectly ok to read it as an afterwards.
March 15, 2026
I got to meet Anne Fadiman years ago at an event in Albany just before Wine-Lover’s Daughter came out. I knew that there would be a book-signing afterwards. I came prepared with my copies of At Large and At Small and Ex Libris. I was at the head of the line. It was my turn. I walked up to her and tried to talk and nothing came out. Of all the writers I’ve gotten the chance to meet over the years, this is the only time that this has happened. And though it was true of those other writers too, I think I froze up (and almost certainly freaked her out) because there was just so much I wanted to say to her that I knew couldn’t be communicated (let alone communicated in the forty seconds it was going to take her to sign my books before security escorted me out of the building). Anne Fadiman is my favorite living non-fiction writer, and the only other non-fiction writer who I think challenges her in my own personal Mount Olympus is David Foster Wallace, and since life is a palimpsest of impossible coincidences it was actually Wallace who introduced me to Fadiman through his posthumously published DFW Reader, for which Fadiman penned a mini-essay that followed “Getting Away from Already Pretty Much Being Away from It All,” which I wouldn’t have paid any special attention to except that the DFW Reader was released on a day that I was working at the bookstore I used to work at in Warwick, NY, and was the same day that a classmate, N. West Moss, from my thesis seminar happened to visit that very bookstore and while we chatted about the impossible coincidence of running into each other at this bookstore of all places she noticed me with the DFW Reader and saw that Fadiman had written this mini-essay and mentioned how much she liked her and I went home with three books that day instead of one. Fadiman’s writing sparkles. She’s funny and smart and reminds me that literature is the most important thing. Her sentences are perfect. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed reading something as much as this.
May 18, 2026
“Yes to Everything” left me speechless. This collection is so much about change, and loss, and the loss that change brings, but to meet Marina Keegan on the page was devastating—and yet not only sad, because that would miss the point altogether. I keep returning to one of Marina’s emails: “I’m realizing how much I love Yale. With my minutes before sleep preoccupied with The Future for the first time in a while, I’m beginning to regard Yale with a kind of premature nostalgia. I WANT TO TAKE EVERY CLASS IN THE CATALOGUE. I WANT TO SEE EVERY BUILDING. I WANT TO SPEND TIME WITH ALL MY FRIENDS.” I want to read every book and take every class, to write and to think and to contend with, in the way Anne Fadiman does, The Future and also The Past.
March 13, 2026
anne fadiman is a real genius with the word.
these essays span a vast territory -- including historical polar expeditions, people long gone, people who left very suddenly, and, well, frogs. but common to them all is the trace of her magical ability to transform the mundane into the sublime, or to humble the lofty by making its trifling details rise to our attention. incredibly funny, surprisingly touching, but most importantly, filled with her idiosyncratic phraseology that simultaneously challenges and tickles the mind.
these essays span a vast territory -- including historical polar expeditions, people long gone, people who left very suddenly, and, well, frogs. but common to them all is the trace of her magical ability to transform the mundane into the sublime, or to humble the lofty by making its trifling details rise to our attention. incredibly funny, surprisingly touching, but most importantly, filled with her idiosyncratic phraseology that simultaneously challenges and tickles the mind.
May 16, 2026
Aunque Ex Libris sigue siendo mi preferida de Anne Fadiman, en estos ensayos hay momentos alucinantes. Ya el prólogo de Sam Anderson es bueno y señala los cinco motivos por los que nos gusta Fadiman. coincido con todos ellos. De los ensayos, los mejores son Frog y The oakling and the oak. El resto entra en el terreno de los personal y algunas veces de lo políticamente correcto. Por desgracia, no me gusta que me adoctrinen, lo que ha restado algunos puntos sin dejar de valorar positivamente que escriba lo que escriba, lo hace muy bien y es una gran escritora.
June 4, 2026
This collection of essays was such a masterful example of writing in this genre. I am an essay enthusiast and it delighted me to find a new essayist to add to my list of favourites. Anne Fadiman is a renowned Yale professor of writing and one of her most poignant essays reflects on the cut-too-short life of one of her students. The essays also touch on her pet frog, Shackleton and a little know part of his expedition (hint: it involves writing), and pronouns (from a grammar perspective). Amazing collection.
May 10, 2026
A beautiful collection of essays with surprising power given their short length and intimate scale. Reading this makes me deeply regret not pursuing creative writing. Or not applying to Fadiman’s seminar at Yale.
One of my favorite quotes: “High on their posthumous pedestals, the dead become hard to see. Grief, deference, and the homogenizing effects of adulation blur the details, flatten the bumps, sand off the sharp corners.”
One of my favorite quotes: “High on their posthumous pedestals, the dead become hard to see. Grief, deference, and the homogenizing effects of adulation blur the details, flatten the bumps, sand off the sharp corners.”
May 31, 2026
Very reminiscent of Nora Ephron, if focused much more on writing & Yale.
I hesitate to say “surprisingly” in surprisingly good because I had no prior experience with Fadiman and it seems that the whole world does. The foreword to this collection almost put me off reading the essays: Anderson’s eagerness comes across as almost disingenuous with numerous quotations and references made to the essays themselves.
I hesitate to say “surprisingly” in surprisingly good because I had no prior experience with Fadiman and it seems that the whole world does. The foreword to this collection almost put me off reading the essays: Anderson’s eagerness comes across as almost disingenuous with numerous quotations and references made to the essays themselves.
June 12, 2026
First on my NYT summer reading challenge, this is the book published within the last year. Anne Fadiman’s first book of essays, Ex Libris, is what I usually say is my favorite book. Her second book of essays is reread less, but I remember enjoying it a lot. This one had some very long essays that could’ve been shorter, but as usual the book was a total mishmash of topics and charmingly written. The emotional wallop of the final two really makes the book.
May 3, 2026
I love the writing style of Fadiman! Once you succumb to the lists you will find detailed descriptions that reveal essential truths of our existence!
Particularly I loved her diatribe on printers and the experience of learning from her students, be it through their grammar rule-breaking or their diverging experiences of Covid!
Particularly I loved her diatribe on printers and the experience of learning from her students, be it through their grammar rule-breaking or their diverging experiences of Covid!
July 26, 2026
4.5 ⭐️
I’m leaving this book so inspired to write myself. I would love to take this woman’s class, but what I’ve learned in this collection is to just do it (especially that last essay). Maybe what I have to say isn’t interesting, but nonetheless I’m feeling compelled to write it down. To memorialize the mundane.
Of the essays, I think All My Pronouns, My Old Printer, and Yes to Everything are must-reads. And the only skip is The Oakling and the Oak. Which I actually didn’t even finish.
I’m leaving this book so inspired to write myself. I would love to take this woman’s class, but what I’ve learned in this collection is to just do it (especially that last essay). Maybe what I have to say isn’t interesting, but nonetheless I’m feeling compelled to write it down. To memorialize the mundane.
Of the essays, I think All My Pronouns, My Old Printer, and Yes to Everything are must-reads. And the only skip is The Oakling and the Oak. Which I actually didn’t even finish.
February 28, 2026
尤其喜欢青蛙和人称代词这两篇。前者从一只死掉的青蛙宠物开始讲起，说到了自己和子女还有动物宠物之间的关系，幽默的文笔看得我时常忍不住嘴角上扬。后者因为人称代词引出关于非二元性别的讨论，说到 boomer 一代如何与年轻人之间的疑惑、沟通和理解。
不知为何最近尤其偏爱读散文。可能是因为散文恰好介于略沉重的纪实/报告文学和需要沉心去读的小说之间。只要有碎片的时间，就可以拿起散文集读几页，完全 stress free. 这本散文集2月刚出版没多久，LA图书馆就有电子版可以借了。谢谢图书馆💖
不知为何最近尤其偏爱读散文。可能是因为散文恰好介于略沉重的纪实/报告文学和需要沉心去读的小说之间。只要有碎片的时间，就可以拿起散文集读几页，完全 stress free. 这本散文集2月刚出版没多久，LA图书馆就有电子版可以借了。谢谢图书馆💖
April 12, 2026
I enjoyed this delightful essay collection. Fadiman's writing is poetic and these essays were beautifully structured. I particularly loved the title essay "Frog" and was surprised how much I enjoyed the South Polar Times essay.
March 30, 2026
Anne Fadiman is just brilliant!
May 4, 2026
i like frogs
May 10, 2026
Excellent writing, even though the topics weren’t always interesting to me. So much crossover with other authors I’ve read.
June 25, 2026
I’ve been a Fadiman Fan since Ex Libris so I went into Frog knowing I would be in for a treat. What I didn’t expect was that once I’d finished this little gem, I just felt like going back to the beginning and doing it all over again. (As I write this, I have become self-conscious of my grammar).
August 9, 2026
Idem u nabavku skoro svih knjiga Anne Fadiman. Apsolutno svih eseja. Jedna od najboljih stvari koje sam citala ikad.
August 10, 2026
Good writer random essays
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June 22, 2026I’ve loved Anne Fadiman’s writing on books, but I was amazed at her ability to so thoroughly capture my attention on topics I have no interest in (and I have a particular aversion to polar expeditions). I only wish this collection was longer.
July 26, 2026
Wow this book makes me want to become a better writer. Had to look up an embarrassing amount of words and phrases used. I have learned a lot from these essays.
May 16, 2026
Every Anne Fadiman essay is like a polished, multifaceted jewel. She has an incredible way with words, both erudite and accessible at the same time. As a frog owner, I especially enjoyed her essay on her family’s frog.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews