Customer Reviews

One Hundred Great Essays

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If you are an instructor of advanced English Composition or a literature class, this volume, edited by Robert DiYanni, is very comprehensive and represents a wide range of subjects and styles.

The anthology includes writers like: James Baldwin, Stephen Jay Gould, E.B. White, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Ehrlich, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, George Orwell, and Maxine Hong Kingston. I might not recommend this book for an introduction to literature or introduction to expository prose because it is too overwhelming, and one would never be able to cover even one-third of the essays. However, in a more advanced class, this would fit in quite well.

I don't always agree with the commentaries that precede each essay, and I don't find all the "Possibilities for writing" questions after each essay that valuable. However, most of them have some relevance.

All in all, "One Hundred Great Essays" by Robert DiYanni is a worthwhile and practical collection that will appeal to teachers and students alike.

Rocco Dormarunno, College of New Rochelle

I give up. There's no way I can communicate, within a reasonable investment of my time, the many great things about this book. But if you've an interest in the essay genre, and have not read it, you're doing yourself a great disservice.

Reviewing the table of contents removes any need for me to comment on the actual essays. From staples like Montaigne and Lamb to contemporary pieces from Dave Berry and Tom Wolfe-the editor has presented a fresh variety of both content and form. He leaves you to beat any one of these essayists into the ground on your own time, and instead lifts you up on his shoulders to have a look around.

In my estimation, the book's best quality is its ability to guide you through the process of reading essays analytically; as well as guiding you through these works individually without shoving the editor's interpretation down your throat. Exercises for analytical reading, notes on the authors, notes on the individual works-it's got it all.

This book holds something valuable for everyone.

William Dylan Powell

In part this review is based upon my use of the book in the classroom, in essay writing classes. But this may not be so much a bias, for what other possible reason would this book be written? (And it does overtly identify itself as for the classroom.) And yet I have to ask, why would you then collect this particular group of works? Yes, there are some truly great essays in this collection: Emerson's "Nature" (but no other Emerson, strangely), Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant," Swift's "A Modest Proposal," but how do you explain excerpts from _The Communist Manifesto_, _Natural Selection_, and other books? Obviously they are not essays. So of what value are they in exploring the structural and stylistic demands of the essay? And what of the Gettysburg Address? Or the introduction to Brownmiller's book _Femininity_? Or Plato's Allegory of the Cave?

Yet that excerpt might be more damning than Diyanni realizes, for it is worth pointing that the excerpt of the Republic that covers the allegory of the cave is limited to the allegory proper, and eliminates the rhetorical context that follows: a context that puts the allegory within Socrates's argument as a whole. If the allegory was to be of some value as a "Great Essay," wouldn't it be necessary to keep it within the greater rhetorical structure, so the reader could see how Plato developed the structure and rhetoric of the argument as a whole? If the first question offered by Diyanni in the "Possibilities for Writing" (that follows every 'essay') is "Analyze Plato's allegory carefully," wouldn't it be necessary to include the whole of the rhetorical structure of the text, so the allegory could be analyzed in full? After all, the main point of the allegory is not the issue of the world of illusion, but the obligations of the enlightened to educate. Something Diyanni seems to have fallen short on.

Beyond the silliness of 'great essays' that are not essays, there are far too many contemporary essays that really are not that good at all. In using this book in an upper-class, collegiate article and essay course, we spoke far more (and far more readily) of flaws, weaknesses, and flat poor writing than moments of quality. To many of these examples are no more great essays than a Grisham novel is great literature. And far too many of them offer nothing in the nature of examples of brilliance in essay writing for the anthology to be of any value.

There are some great things. And many of the essays are fun to read -- in the way that Grisham might be considered fun to read. But I believe they were chosen far more on content than on writing excellence. One of the primary reasons I believe this are those questions, those "Possibilities for Writing," that follow the texts. For example, after Guy Davenport's "The Geography of the Imagination," a rather incontinent piece, the first question is: "Define what Davenport means by 'gothic,' 'classical,' and 'arabesque,' using your own examples to supplement your definitions." How in any way is that question involved with great essay writing? How in any way is that about essay writing -- or essays! -- at all? (That is, outside of revealing to an attendent student just how poorly Davenport utilized, defined and controlled those ideas.) It isn't: it concerns content only. As such this is a poor anthology for any educational purpose.

I titled this review "Commentary on the State of Belles Lettres?" Obviously this anthology offers texts from over a large span of time, and some of the writing is obviously of quality, so I don't mean the essays themselves (as a whole); rather, I refer in a lesser part to the contemporary essays, and in a greater to Diyanni's sensibility: for if this is what is considered a collection of 'great essays,' how far, indeed, the concept of the essay has fallen. Perhaps a better title would be _100 Examples of Prose (both Great and Not-so-great)_. If you enjoy prose, but without great demands of quality, perhaps this is worthy bedside (or commode-side) reading. But if you are looking to explore what lies within writing great essays, look elsewhere. (Buy a collection of Emerson.)

There are several ways you could look at examining a book of 100 Great Essays. First, you could argue for months over whether these 100 are the absolute best in the world across all time. Are they the best written? The best examples of what essays have been like across the centuries? The best collection that includes a variety of cultural backgrounds? The best to catch the attention of the target audience, which we'll assume is the 18-20 year old new writer?

I realize there is no way any two people could ever come to a consensus on this issue, but I do think Diyanni did a reasonable job coming up with a collection which is interesting to read, that new writers will find inspiring, and that covers a range of time periods and ethnic backgrounds. There are essays by dead white males and by feisty female hispanics. There are serious essays about politics and fun essays about cats vs dogs. Some essays make you think, "this person feels exactly the way I do!" and other essays where you shake your head in disagreement the entire time. Perhaps most importantly, for the vast majority of these essays, you enjoy reading them, and you are drawn into wanting to write essays of your own. If the book is going to do one thing, I think that is a key. It demonstrates a variety of writing styles, all of them are fairly well done, and they inject an enthusiasm into the reader to give it a try.

The brief biographies and commentaries are helpful to place a given essay in its location in history. Knowing that an essay written about the African American experience was created in 1950 rather than 2010 makes a fairly significant difference.

The questions to ponder at the end of each essay are not rocket science. "Do you agree or disagree with the author" is fairly bland. "Write a similar essay" is not something we needed the book to direct us towards. Definitely all of those end-of-essay questions could use some tuning.

Still, for me that is not the great value of the book. The value is that, in one spot, I have a ton of wonderful essays that I can read, enjoy, and draw inspiration from. It's like having a "writing prompts" book chock full of brilliant ideas. I often found myself finishing one essay that had been assigned, and reading right into the next one because it seemed so appealing. My writing creativity was sparked in a variety of ways, and I became familiar with a number of authors who I might not have otherwise heard about.

A great book to enjoy.

...to read this collection of essays thoroughly and try the exercises at the end of each essay to develop my writing skills. This book contains an eclectic assortment of essays by a diverse group of writers. I was glad to meet this book's acquaintance while substitute-teaching a high-school English Literature class and had to own it after I read an essay on naps. This book does not disappoint...

I got this for my daughter for school and it was great quality,price, and condition. It is especially great if you are interested in essays. She thought it was ok but i liked it. A great buy.

We specifically ordered the copy from this vendor because of the price and "NEW" status. My son's face just sank when he opened the package to find a book with both covers bent, the pages totally flared, and the page edges dirty and some dog eared. I had to use a germicide to clean the cover and an iron to try to flatten the dog eared pages. We then placed the book under an encyclopaedia to try to flatten the flared shape of the book. It feels cleaner, but still looks quite used. I would never order from this vendor again - SHAME ON YOU, MarLass! Lying on the internet is just as wrong as lying to someone's face. If we didn't need the book immediately, I would return it to you. Amazon should drop you like an ugly used book!