Twenty-Five Great Essays

by Robert DiYanni

Twenty-Five Great Essays provides an outstanding collection of classic and contemporary writing as part of Longman's Penguin Academics Series of low-cost, high-quality offerings.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Writing

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 2001

About the author

Robert DiYanni is an adjunct professor of humanities and an instructional consultant at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at New York University. In these capacities he teaches courses on critical thinking, interdisciplinary humanities, commerce and culture, and business and its publics, and conducts workshops and consultations with faculty throughout the university on aspects of pedagogical practice. Before coming to NYU, Dr. DiYanni taught at Queens College and Pace University and as a visiting professor at Harvard. He also served, for ten years, as Director of International Services at The College Board.

Reviews

[Zachary Owen]

A solid collection of classic and modern essays from a diverse array of writers. This was originally a text book for a class I took in college and I decided to revisit it and read it in its entirety. There's a little something for everybody. It includes one of my all time favorite essays (Salvation by Langston Hughes). Amy Tan's Mother Tongue was among my favorite pieces I'd missed during my first go-round with this book. Annie Dillard's Living Like Weasels was as poetic and imaginative as I'd remembered.

[Rachel]

i was supposed to read this ten years ago for ap english oops sorry mr. hardy! it was actually very interesting .. who would have thought.

highlights: a partial remembrance of a puerto rican childhood by judith ortiz cover, letters from birmingham jail by martin luther king, a woman’s beauty: put down or power source by susan sontag, mother tounge by amy tan, and once more to the lake by e.b. white

[Carla Catalano]

Favorites:
Marrying Absurd by Joan Didion
Living Like Weasels by Annie Dillard
Women's Brains by Stephen J. Gould
Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell
Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self by Alice Walker

[Jocelyn]

I must have read this when my kids were in high school, but if I did I forgot most of it. I'm tellin' you, these are some really great essays by some great writers. Start with Francis Bacon and sample Annie Dillard, Jamaica Kinkaid, and Mark Twain until you get to Virginia Woolf. Most of the essays focus on topics like civil rights, gender, colonialism, ethnicity, and nature. Can you tell the editor has been a college professor?

[Nita]

The essays in the book were generally well-chosen. They offer a sampling from a wide spectrum of authors and are mostly, well worth reading. In a later edition, I would like to find a David Sedaris essay offered or perhaps, one written by the late David Foster Wallace--both of whom are fine contemporary writers.

[Jillian]

Excellent collection of essays that I picked up for a dollar at a university book sale. My personal favorites include Woolf’s "The Death of the Moth" and Orwell’s "Shooting an Elephant." I'm also excited to use MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in a class on argument and rhetoric.

[Peace]

A pretty good compilation of essays. Good background information on both the authors and the essays themselves. Stand-outs included Langston Hughes' Salvation and James Thurber's University Days. I also highly enjoyed rereading Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal..