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The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present
A monumental, canon-defining anthology of three centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate
"Not only an education but a joy. This is a book for the ages." —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
The essay form is an especially democratic one, and many of the essays Phillip Lopate has gathered here address themselves—sometimes critically—to American values. We see the Puritans, the Founding Fathers and Mothers, and the stars of the American Renaissance struggle to establish a national culture. A grand tradition of nature writing runs from Audubon, Thoreau, and John Muir to Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard. Marginalized groups use the essay to assert or to complicate notions of identity. Lopate has cast his net wide, embracing critical, personal, political, philosophical, literary, polemical, autobiographical, and humorous essays. Americans by birth as well as immigrants appear here, famous essayists alongside writers more celebrated for fiction or poetry. The result is a dazzling overview of the riches of the American essay.
"Not only an education but a joy. This is a book for the ages." —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
The essay form is an especially democratic one, and many of the essays Phillip Lopate has gathered here address themselves—sometimes critically—to American values. We see the Puritans, the Founding Fathers and Mothers, and the stars of the American Renaissance struggle to establish a national culture. A grand tradition of nature writing runs from Audubon, Thoreau, and John Muir to Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard. Marginalized groups use the essay to assert or to complicate notions of identity. Lopate has cast his net wide, embracing critical, personal, political, philosophical, literary, polemical, autobiographical, and humorous essays. Americans by birth as well as immigrants appear here, famous essayists alongside writers more celebrated for fiction or poetry. The result is a dazzling overview of the riches of the American essay.
928 pages, Paperback
Published October 19, 2021
125 people are currently reading
739 people want to read
About the author
Phillip Lopate
106 books104 followersPhillip Lopate is the author of three personal essay collections, two novels, two poetry collections, a memoir of his teaching experiences, and a collection of his movie criticism. He has edited the following anthologies, and his essays, fiction, poetry, film and architectural criticism have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The Paris Review, Harper's, Vogue, Esquire, New York Times, Harvard Educational Review, Conde Nast Traveler, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School and Bennington.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 7, 2024
This collection of essays exceeded my expectations. They were in fact glorious. There were only a small few that I did not enjoy, and some were just amazing, absolutely amazing.
One of my favorite essays is a long one by Wallace Stegner (1980): The Twilight on Self-Reliance: Frontier Values and Contemporary America. In this essay he covers with the early start of the Americas, with conquest and plundering of resources; then came the colonists, values and the “new” cheap land. The history of the United States is here comprehensively in this one essay that explains nearly everything. I was absolutely astonished by this essay.
Only one essay per writer, the essays are of varying lengths, a few very short just a couple of pages and several that are over twenty. Included are many, many familiar names, and many that are not. Even with the familiar the essays chosen are not the typical ones found in anthologies.
The book is dense, tiny print hardly any spaces and shrank the book to 900 pages, what a normal printing book might reach 1,500. When I started I quickly realized it would take some months. It did, just over three months for me with fairly consistent reading, but I had expected it to take longer. This book takes some considerable time to get through, but it was worth it.
One of my favorite essays is a long one by Wallace Stegner (1980): The Twilight on Self-Reliance: Frontier Values and Contemporary America. In this essay he covers with the early start of the Americas, with conquest and plundering of resources; then came the colonists, values and the “new” cheap land. The history of the United States is here comprehensively in this one essay that explains nearly everything. I was absolutely astonished by this essay.
Only one essay per writer, the essays are of varying lengths, a few very short just a couple of pages and several that are over twenty. Included are many, many familiar names, and many that are not. Even with the familiar the essays chosen are not the typical ones found in anthologies.
The book is dense, tiny print hardly any spaces and shrank the book to 900 pages, what a normal printing book might reach 1,500. When I started I quickly realized it would take some months. It did, just over three months for me with fairly consistent reading, but I had expected it to take longer. This book takes some considerable time to get through, but it was worth it.
February 25, 2021
Very enjoyable. Brings together a variety of American voices from HL Mencken making fun of Puritans to novelist Marilynne Robinson celebrating the best of their legacy to document the thinking that goes into the American experience.
November 20, 2020
Lopate's anthology is one the best, if not the best, collection of American historical thought. It covers a variety of subjects, showing the breadth and depth of American identity in writing. Much could be said about the specific essays, but in a review of an anthology, it is important to focus on the choices that are included. Many of these writings give the reader insight into the meaning of being an American; sometimes those conclusions are challenged. The essays show that Americans can be in dialogue with each other, even when divided by decades. There is a balance between all time periods here, which is something that cannot often be said of anthologies. Although many market themselves of being representative of an entire period or genre, they often are not. This anthology balances early American writing with modern American writing, political with cultural.
It's a volume that in hard copy, over the ensuing years, I see becoming marked, filled with post-it notes and highlights, and annotated with each subsequent read. Lopate does a great service to the reader by including a table of contents also organized by theme. While I think the ultimate decision on how to understand these essays is up to the reader, this does a great job at starting a conversation about the meaning and connection between different writings.
I also liked that fact that many of these writings were ones that don't necessarily pop into one's mind. There are some more familiar ones, like Edwards' sermon, or Whitman on Lincoln, but this is fresh and invigorating, giving the reader something new to process and think about. It was great intellectual play to read through and consider previously unread work by writers I already knew, and to consider the context of these works.
Lopate's introductory essay also lends itself to consideration, and does a fantastic job of arguing for the merits of American prose.
I cannot speak highly enough of this captivating, engaging collection.
It's a volume that in hard copy, over the ensuing years, I see becoming marked, filled with post-it notes and highlights, and annotated with each subsequent read. Lopate does a great service to the reader by including a table of contents also organized by theme. While I think the ultimate decision on how to understand these essays is up to the reader, this does a great job at starting a conversation about the meaning and connection between different writings.
I also liked that fact that many of these writings were ones that don't necessarily pop into one's mind. There are some more familiar ones, like Edwards' sermon, or Whitman on Lincoln, but this is fresh and invigorating, giving the reader something new to process and think about. It was great intellectual play to read through and consider previously unread work by writers I already knew, and to consider the context of these works.
Lopate's introductory essay also lends itself to consideration, and does a fantastic job of arguing for the merits of American prose.
I cannot speak highly enough of this captivating, engaging collection.
April 2, 2021
This was the most eclectic book of essays I've read. Wonderful, the whole spectrum!
May 7, 2021
The Glorious American Essay is a must read9 for anyone who has an interest in American history. It is a compilation of essays, letters, sermons and speeches that have helped to weave the fabric that is the United States. Included are Founding Fathers like Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton. Writings from authors like Fitzgerald, Hawthorn and Poe. There are activists, scientists, poets, politicians and so many more. This book is such a wealth of information and an excellent addition to any personal library.
December 11, 2024
Very thorough. Would not call it comprehensive but I don’t think that was the goal; Lopate succeeds in reaching out towards many corners of American culture over time
December 21, 2021
The Glorious American Essay is an authoritative, well-curated collection of American essays from 1726 to 2008. Phillip Lopate, in his introduction, discusses his intent to compile these essays according to two themes. First, they accommodate every nuanced definition of the "essay," from sermons and letters to biographies and fragmented memoirs. Second, the essays are intended to expose the persistent questions that dominate American intellectual life: the debates surrounding American morality, our country's place in the world, and how our ideals relate to our actions. In both of these goals, Lopate is undoubtedly successful -- the essays bear a sense of progression and connection throughout the book's chronology, and they expose the many different things that are united under this single literary banner.
Of the essays themselves, I won't share too much criticism, since that reflects more on the individual authors than on Lopate and this collection. Many essays in this book were thoroughly fascinating. Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural, Albert Einstein's "The World As I See It," and Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" are all stellar works that deserve their place in the American literary canon. A few essays I found to be on the duller side, dry and unremarkable when compared to such masterpieces, and to modern sensibilities in general. However, this is to be somewhat expected when the collection consists of 100 essays -- in an effort to capture the whole scope of American essays from the country's foundation, some less interesting pieces will inevitably be unearthed.
And for the most part, Lopate does an admirable job as the collection's editor. I was fascinated to notice the evolution in literary trends between each century, and to explore the different lenses with which authors would consider variations of the same fundamental problems. The collection was also, as I assume Lopate intended, rather comforting when viewed in today's political conditions. Americans have always been dissatisfied with aspects of their society and government. And though discussion was often emphatic, the country has continued to grow and sustain itself so as to inspire new art, new reflections on current American life. As a final note, I do wish that Lopate included more modern essays into the collection -- though he was undoubtedly hindered by publishing regulations, even Zadie Smith's 2008 "Speaking in Tongues" feels antiquated in 2021.
On the whole, Phillip Lopate's Glorious American Essay is a model of the essay anthology. It's not easy to get through 100 essays containing all varieties of difficulty and idiosyncrasy, but the essays are intellectually stimulating and connect to each other in a meaningful way. I would only recommend such a book to dedicated and passionate nonfiction readers, but I am certain that this book has helped me learn, become more well-read within American literature, and take a greater interest in the art of the essay.
Of the essays themselves, I won't share too much criticism, since that reflects more on the individual authors than on Lopate and this collection. Many essays in this book were thoroughly fascinating. Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural, Albert Einstein's "The World As I See It," and Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" are all stellar works that deserve their place in the American literary canon. A few essays I found to be on the duller side, dry and unremarkable when compared to such masterpieces, and to modern sensibilities in general. However, this is to be somewhat expected when the collection consists of 100 essays -- in an effort to capture the whole scope of American essays from the country's foundation, some less interesting pieces will inevitably be unearthed.
And for the most part, Lopate does an admirable job as the collection's editor. I was fascinated to notice the evolution in literary trends between each century, and to explore the different lenses with which authors would consider variations of the same fundamental problems. The collection was also, as I assume Lopate intended, rather comforting when viewed in today's political conditions. Americans have always been dissatisfied with aspects of their society and government. And though discussion was often emphatic, the country has continued to grow and sustain itself so as to inspire new art, new reflections on current American life. As a final note, I do wish that Lopate included more modern essays into the collection -- though he was undoubtedly hindered by publishing regulations, even Zadie Smith's 2008 "Speaking in Tongues" feels antiquated in 2021.
On the whole, Phillip Lopate's Glorious American Essay is a model of the essay anthology. It's not easy to get through 100 essays containing all varieties of difficulty and idiosyncrasy, but the essays are intellectually stimulating and connect to each other in a meaningful way. I would only recommend such a book to dedicated and passionate nonfiction readers, but I am certain that this book has helped me learn, become more well-read within American literature, and take a greater interest in the art of the essay.
October 3, 2021
This book is aptly named; it is truly glorious. It contains such a wide range of essays and covers works from Colonial Times to now. It is such a treat and will be loved by readers with inquiring minds. It is extraordinarily generous as well, clocking in at over 900 pages.
Start at the very beginning of the book, following an excellent introduction. There you will find authors including Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Paine, to mention just the first three. Or…just dip in anywhere that appeals. It is impossible to do justice to all that is found here. How about Washington or Lincoln? Henry James? Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Edith Wharton? Zora Neale Hurston? The choices go on and on until one finally approaches the end of the book to find Marilynne Robinson and Zadie Smith among others.
This is a gorgeous book. Think about getting it for yourself or someone you love right now or maybe as a holiday gift.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher . All opinions are my own.
Start at the very beginning of the book, following an excellent introduction. There you will find authors including Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Paine, to mention just the first three. Or…just dip in anywhere that appeals. It is impossible to do justice to all that is found here. How about Washington or Lincoln? Henry James? Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Edith Wharton? Zora Neale Hurston? The choices go on and on until one finally approaches the end of the book to find Marilynne Robinson and Zadie Smith among others.
This is a gorgeous book. Think about getting it for yourself or someone you love right now or maybe as a holiday gift.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher . All opinions are my own.
June 22, 2022
Lopate has gathered 100 essays in The Glorious American Essay. Almost certainly, there’s something here for everyone.
Personally, I’m a reasonably well read and literate guy, and I recognized a little more than half of the authors. That proves nothing except the obvious: I never heard of almost half of these authors.
I think maybe I have an unconventional idea about what constitutes an essay. It seems to me that an essay should be a short, successful effort to make a point about beauty, or morality, or love, or peach pie, or something. It should reach an obvious conclusion or relevant ending. It should be literate. It should be a learning experience.
Case in point: one of the selections is Edgar Allan Poe holding forth on “The Philosophy of Furniture." (I never heard of this one either). The piece is unsummarizable. Poe allows himself to speak disdainfully about self-proclaimed experts who have the visage “d’un mouton qui rêve”—of a sheep that’s dreaming. That’s about where I stopped reading.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
Personally, I’m a reasonably well read and literate guy, and I recognized a little more than half of the authors. That proves nothing except the obvious: I never heard of almost half of these authors.
I think maybe I have an unconventional idea about what constitutes an essay. It seems to me that an essay should be a short, successful effort to make a point about beauty, or morality, or love, or peach pie, or something. It should reach an obvious conclusion or relevant ending. It should be literate. It should be a learning experience.
Case in point: one of the selections is Edgar Allan Poe holding forth on “The Philosophy of Furniture." (I never heard of this one either). The piece is unsummarizable. Poe allows himself to speak disdainfully about self-proclaimed experts who have the visage “d’un mouton qui rêve”—of a sheep that’s dreaming. That’s about where I stopped reading.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
May 5, 2022
Herein are 100 essays written by Americans, the earliest from 1726 (I've just never read anything by Cotton Mather that I liked, I guess it's just personal preference.) and the most recent from 20008. There were probably 25 to 30 that I read, stopped and thought, read again, thought some more - essays that I couldn't get out of my head.
I struggled with my star rating on this one because not all of these essays struck me as all that fabulous. Maybe I'm a "modern man" because they seemed to get better as they got newer, the book being presented in chronological order by date of publication. And if I've got that many new thoughts poking around, that's got to be worth five stars.
The essay is something that ebbs and flows in popularity, but if you like the form, you'll love this book - very highly recommended.
I struggled with my star rating on this one because not all of these essays struck me as all that fabulous. Maybe I'm a "modern man" because they seemed to get better as they got newer, the book being presented in chronological order by date of publication. And if I've got that many new thoughts poking around, that's got to be worth five stars.
The essay is something that ebbs and flows in popularity, but if you like the form, you'll love this book - very highly recommended.
February 25, 2021
One must be grateful to Philipp Lopate for compiling & editing this wonderful collection of essays, a wide range of thought provoking pieces spanning more than 2 centuries.
Whether it is subjective, controversial, artistic, religious, political or philosophical, this book offers to the reader a delightful sample of a unique American tradition, a celebration of the best in American prose writing.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Knopf/Doubleday for the opportunity to read this wonderful collection of essays prior to its release date
Whether it is subjective, controversial, artistic, religious, political or philosophical, this book offers to the reader a delightful sample of a unique American tradition, a celebration of the best in American prose writing.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Knopf/Doubleday for the opportunity to read this wonderful collection of essays prior to its release date
March 15, 2021
Discovered that I finished this with exactly three weeks until the next book in the series comes out. My response? Exasperation! There��s a lot of good here— unexpected essays from major voices, major statements from people I’d never heard of, and then of course all the chapters you force yourself to read as mental fortification— but it’s a massive undertaking, and you know, there’s other stuff I’d rather be reading...
Want to read
February 9, 2021Review copy provided by publisher - February 2021
September 15, 2023
Can I give it 10 stars? My favorite book in 2023. I am all about the essay form right now, looking for more, thanks to this book.
December 7, 2023
Interesting if you like essays. Skimmed most of these, only read deeply the ones I was interested in.
December 27, 2020
A collection of historical essays unlike any other, Phillip Lopate has accomplished something special. My review: https://medium.com/park-recommendatio...
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews