Product Description

A delightful, witty, spirited collection of short pieces and essays by the inimitable E. B. White.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #274466 in Books
• Published on: 1991-09-27
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .63" h x 5.33" w x 8.02" l, .42 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

From Amazon.com
Three years after E. B. White's death, Rebecca Dale discovered a cache of his New Yorker writings that had yet to be collected. There's certainly nothing mediocre about these 161 pieces, which range from nature vignettes (a New York City sparrow extols urban life) to musings on language, business, and liberty. White's 1953 fantasia of visiting Thoreau's Walden Pond with Joseph McCarthy is peerless. "Wait a minute!" the senator realizes. "This man was Communist-inspired. That accounts for his sour attitude about housing--" The satire is strong, but so is the celebration. A short piece on a skating fest ends: "Ice is an odd substance to have at last freed the body in its persistent attempt to catch up with the spirit." And speaking of which, in "Fred On Space" White asks his dead dachshund how he feels about the first dog launched by the Russians. Fred is far from impressed: "The excuse you men give is that you must continually add to the store of human knowledge--a store that already resembles a supermarket and is beginning to hypnotize the customers."

From Library Journal
Essayist and author of such children's favorites as Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, White also served as an editorial writer for The New Yorker . Many of these short pieces have been included in this collection, which traces White's development as a writer from his short, almost flippant works of the Twenties and Thirties to the longer, more thoughtful and penetrating essays of the Forties and Fif ties. Wide-ranging in subject matter, these essays tackle such diverse subjects as Khrushchev, re volving doors, and Sunday drivers in New York, all with a sense of humor. Besides bringing all these gems together, this book offers a valuable historical perspective, especially of the Cold War years, and some lessons for our present-day leaders. Recommended for most libraries.
- Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ingram
Beautifully written, full of vitality, humor, love of life, and the free spirit, these short pieces are classics meant to be read and re-read with great delight. "There of the country's great literary treasures."--New York Times.