Essays & Speeches

The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 essays, most of which were published as serialized articles between October 1787 and April 1788, by the American statesmen Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Released under the pseudonym Publius, a common name in ancient Rome derived from the word for “the people” or “of the people,” The Federalist Papers were written to persuade the voters of New York state to ratify the US Constitution. The... Read The Federalist Papers Summary

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963) comprises two autobiographical essays in which the author confronts the racial issues and tensions that he believes corrupt and deform American life and the American dream. Baldwin’s essays exemplify and precursor many of the elements and arguments central to the Civil Rights movement. Please note: Throughout the text, Baldwin uses the racial labels/language common at the time he was writing. This study guide, which uses the Vintage Reissue... Read The Fire Next Time Summary

The Fire This Time is a contemporary anthology responding to America’s turbulent racial climate. Jesmyn Ward, associate professor of English at Tulane University, edited the anthology. She has won numerous awards for her fiction writing, and in this book she seeks to present a collection of writing poetry from varied voices to illustrate the current moment and imagine a possible future. The book, which contains 14 essays and four poems, was published in 2016. In her... Read The Fire This Time Summary

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Andrew Carnegie wrote “The Gospel of Wealth” in June 1889. Carnegie begins his treatise by identifying what he sees as the most significant problem of modern-day times: “the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship” (1).Carnegie mentions that, in the past, “there was little difference” (1) between the living situations of a leader of a community and those of the members... Read The Gospel Of Wealth Summary

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History is a nonfiction essay collection published in 1984 by American historian Robert Darnton. Using folktales, oral histories, letters, and police reports, Darnton explores the attitudes and behaviors of 18th-century French men and women, from indigent peasants to the most celebrated minds of the Enlightenment. The book takes its title from a perplexing incident in the late 1730s, in which a group of Parisian printers’... Read The Great Cat Massacre Summary

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“The Great Lawsuit” is an essay by Margaret Fuller, an American writer known for her contributions to transcendentalism and the women’s rights movement of the 1800s. It was first published in 1843 in The Dial, a journal she edited at the time. Fuller expanded the piece to create Woman in the Nineteenth Century, a book published in 1845.An early example of feminist writing and a vehicle for transcendental ideas, “The Great Lawsuit” centers on concepts... Read The Great Lawsuit Summary

In October of 1936, American journalist and novelist John Steinbeck wrote a series of essay-style articles for The San Francisco News on the migration of hundreds of thousands of white farmworkers from the Midwest and the South to work in California’s booming agricultural sector. Known together as The Harvest Gypsies, these seven articles are compiled in the nonfiction book The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, which was first published in... Read The Harvest Gypsies Summary

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The Labyrinth of Solitude is a nine-part philosophical and historical essay on Mexican identity and culture. Octavio Paz, a famous Mexican poet and career diplomat, began writing The Labyrinth of Solitude during his time as the Mexican ambassador to France in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1951, the first edition of Paz’s work appeared in Spanish under the title El labertino de la soledad, and it is widely considered to be Paz’s masterpiece. This... Read The Labyrinth of Solitude Summary

The Last Lecture, published in 2008, is a best-selling memoir that repurposes the final lecture delivered by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The book, which was co-authored with Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffery Zaslow, fleshes out Pausch’s lecture, delving into the background behind the speech and detailing the months after its delivery, ultimately becoming a record of Pausch’s life. He admits that “under the ruse of giving an academic lecture... Read The Last Lecture Summary

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One of the monuments of 20th-century philosophy, The Myth of Sisyphus, by Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus, delves deeply into the emptiness of life and how to cope with it. Published in France in 1942, during the darkest days of World War II, the book resonated strongly with French readers and soon had a worldwide following. The 2018 edition of the 1955 English translation by Justin O’Brien forms the basis for this study guide.The book’s... Read The Myth of Sisyphus Summary

In Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” the writer presents his argument regarding the creative limitations Black Americans face. Initially published in 1926, the essay traces a short, powerful argument that relies both on Hughes’s own identity as an artist as well as his critical observations of US society. As a Black author writing in the early 20th century, Hughes uses the terms “Negro” and “black” interchangeably; this study guide exclusively uses... Read The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain Summary

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Edgar Allan Poe’s essay “The Philosophy of Composition” first appeared in Graham’s Magazine in 1846. A year earlier, his poem “The Raven” made him a celebrity. In the essay, Poe describes the process he claims to have followed in writing that poem. The essay illustrates Poe’s aesthetic principles according to which a poem must have a certain length, “unity of effect,” and connection among its elements. It also presents his ideas concerning beauty in poetry... Read The Philosophy of Composition Summary

Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) was born into a family of shoemakers and worked his way up from mail carrier to philosopher. He earned his Doctor of Letters from the Sorbonne in 1927, originally studying the intersection of science and philosophy. Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space attracts readers of all types, including architects, poets, and other creative people. The Poetics of Space represents his journey into the philosophy of the imagination. Bachelard published The Poetics of Space... Read The Poetics of Space Summary