Akron Public Library

Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him once more. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine. From armoring the windows with LP covers...

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, David Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself. Sedaris sets his powers of observation toward middle age and mortality, that vertiginous...

A new collection of essays by the humorist author traces his offbeat world travel experiences, which involved surreal encounters with everything from French dentistry and Australian kookaburra eating habits to Beijing squat toilets and a wilderness Costco in North Carolina.

Brings together, for the first time, the best of Gladwell's writing from The New Yorker in the past decade, including: the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill; the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz; spotlighting Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen; and the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer." Gladwell also explores intelligence tests, ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias," and...

All Things Bright and Beautiful is the beloved sequel to Herriot's first collection, All Creatures Great and Small, and picks up as Herriot, now newly married, journeys among the remote hillside farms and valley towns of the Yorkshire Dales, caring for their inhabitants---both two- and four-legged. Throughout, Herriot's deep compassion, humor, and love of life shine out as we laugh, cry, and delight in his portraits of his many, varied animal patients...

The author traces the Big Bang through the rise of civilization, documenting his work with a host of the world's most advanced scientists and mathematicians to explain why things are the way they are.

Read Gibran's masterpiece in print! Set in the mythic city of Orphalese, The Prophet is a poetic treatise on all facets of life, from the daily realities of clothes and houses, to questions of love, beauty, and self-knowledge. Featuring 12 original illustrations by the author, Gibran's lyric exploration of the human condition is as relevant today as it was nearly a century ago.

In stories of wonders great and small, the author reintroduces many old friends like Mrs. Pumphrey, his partner Liegfried Farnon, and his wife Helen. But there are wonderful new faces, too, expecially his children, Rosie and Jimmy, and his latest assistant, Calum Buchanan.The author offers a collection of memoirs, describing the family and friends who share his life on the Yorkshire dales.

Thirty-one of E.B. White's essays grouped under such headings as "The Farm," "The Planet," "Memories," and "Books, Men, and Writing."