Writer Charlotte Painter and artist/photographer Pamela Valois have combined their impressive talents to present these intimate glimpses into the lives of thirty-two remarkable women, each of whom has discovered in maturity the opportunity of exploring new and exciting challenges. These are the Gifts of Age: the time, the freedom, and hopefully the wisdom to develop creative new images of oneself and one's place in the complexities of a long life. All of the women in this book are more than sixty-five years of age, and included are such well-known personalities as Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, Joan Baez Senior, and Louise M. Davies. No two have followed the same path, but each has been successful in achieving some new, frequently unanticipated distinction in her latter years. Gifts of Age is a fascinating insight into just how productive one's extended life can be, and inspiration for anyone who believes that the creative talent for living need not diminish with the passage of years.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

"What's Age Got to Do with It" is a collection of essays by noted Manhattan sex therapist Dr. Shirley Zussman. Now at 103 years old, she is presenting us with a collection of essays written mostly in her later 90's and early 100's. These brief essays are organized by themes: family stories, her perspectives as a sex therapist, musings on psychology and society, and the passage of time. Shirley offers her deep, personal reflections and makes tributes to loved ones from her long and thoughtful life. She covers controversial topics in childhood, marriage and sexuality, raising children, and the impact of technology as well as her thoughts about cultural currents, and the experience of aging. Here, as very few people have been able to do, she shows that aging has nothing to do with creativity, energy, insight, love, and living a full life.

Explains the art of the moral essay and illustrates its execution on such subjects as Harry Potter, TV animal documentaries, and "luckydipping" in the Bible.

The former U.S. Poet Laureate contemplates life, death, and the view from his window in these “alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny” essays (The New York Times). From an early age, Donald Hall dedicated his life to the written word. In his long and celebrated career, he was an accomplished poet, essayist, memoirist, dramatist, and children’s author. Now, in the “unknown, unanticipated galaxy” of very old age, his essays continue to startle, move, and delight. In Essays After Eighty, Hall ruminates on his past: “thirty was terrifying, forty I never noticed because I was drunk, fifty was best with a total change of life, sixty extended the bliss of fifty . . .” He also addresses his present: “When I turned eighty and rubbed testosterone on my chest, my beard roared like a lion and gained four inches.” Most memorably, Hall writes about his enduring love affair with his ancestral Eagle Pond Farm and with the writing life that sustains him every day: “Yesterday my first nap was at 9:30 a.m., but when I awoke I wrote again.” “Deliciously readable…Donald Hall, if abandoned by the muse of poetry, has wrought his prose to a keen autumnal edge.” —The Wall Street Journal