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World Hotels - Essays of E. B. White (Perennial Classics)
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $14.65
Your Save: $ 0.30 ( 2% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.52
EAN: 9780060932237
ISBN: 0060932236
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 1999-06-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: 2006-10-03
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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Editorial Reviews:
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The classic collection by one of the greatest essayists of our time.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Easy Comfort of Quiet Perfection
Comment: I live on a small rural island in the Pacific Northwest, home to fewer than a thousand people in the winter, so I have a deep understanding of what E. B. White means when he writes: "Feeling ran so high that some people stopped speaking to each other--which is a form of discourse."
Lately, I felt the need for something calming in my life and, for the first time in years, I picked up a collection of E. B. White's essays. Reading him is like lighting a fire on a cold and windy evening. This man can write a sentence and create a sense of life as well as anyone I've ever read.
And no one ever wrote more heartfelt prose about barnyard geese.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The elements of E.B.
Comment: Reading these essays which span more than two decades (early 50s to mid-70s), I am struck both by their craft and their antiquity. E.B. White wrote the book on writing, literally, with William Strunk; THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE remains the most useful and concise rule book for modern English exposition yet written, and White's CHARLOTTE'S WEB remains a childhood favorite for many. White was a master of the essay form, sparking a reader's interest in the subject at hand and cajoling further attention to the tangents and digressions which are an essayists stock in trade. He easily wends narratives which include broody geese, nuclear power stations, old dogs, oil tankers and mortality. His voice is plainspoken -- the viewpoint that of a person with deerhunters for neighbors, who enjoys the occasional venison steak, who roots for the deer in hunting season, and yet admits to shooting the foxes who kill his chickens. At the same time, his writing feels dated, rooted in an era when feelings were less admissible than ideas. His writing seems honest, but guarded, particularly after my recent immersion in Ann Lamott, a decidedly unguarded and modernist chronicler. Thus, I emerge from White's work impressed with his grace, language and fluidity, but disappointed in the gut. There are tales untold between these lines and I am left hungry. Old-school excellence, but aging fast.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Comment: This is such a marvelous book.
The sentences are simply perfect and the sense of wonder he creates makes this a text you will want to go back to over and over. A great gift for any literate person in your life.
Really great.
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Summary: The world of E.B. White
Comment: What do you expect of tomorrow? "THE WORLD OF TOMORROW", perhaps the best known essay among his essay collactiond,"Essa of E.B. White". It contains thirty other essays organozed into seven sections.
The scene of "THE WORLD OF TOMORROW" is in New York in May 1939. White mentions "Tomorrow" remembering the World's Fair held there. The Fair's theme was also "THE WORLD OF TOMORROW", and there were the white ball and spire named the Tylon and Perisphere which were two landmark monumental buildings in the fair. Actually White had to visit there with a box of Kleenex...
At first, the road to the World's Fair is refered as the road to "Tomorrow". Through the street, he arrived at "the very threshold of Tomorrow". At the Fair, he made a few notes about what you may expext of tomorrow--In tomorrow, most sounds aren't these themselves, and we can't tallk back.
The New York World's Fair was filled with man's dream, and it's held 66 years ago! The more I read this book, the more I can be into White's world. His way to use metaphor is brilliant, and it makes me feel more comfortable. So, I really recommend you not only this essay but also his another collection.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Word genius
Comment: Twenty two of the essays appeared in THE NEW YORKER. White had candor. His piece on the death of his pig is masterful. He examined his own feelings and community reaction. The role of his dachshund, Fred, is described amusingly. It is no wonder White wrote so winningly for children.
In 1954 when he had no television he was looked upon as an eccentric. During Hurricane Edna radio worked people up to an incredible state of alarm. It seemed that no wick was available for the Whites' kerosene lamp. White has some gentle fun with mistakes of the exhausted radio announcers. Battered down was said instead of battened down, and unindated for inundated. There are two stages in the country of a storm. There is the period when phones and lights are still going, and then there is the stage when these cease to work. The storm itself did not seem long in comparison to the radio vigil.
He came to feel that living in New England in the winter was a full time job in itself. Another use of his time was having an enemy, the fox. Darkness was more insistent than the cold. Farming, even the kind pursued by the author, is infinitely complex. When the snow arrived early in 1971 White was cut short. The usual things were not done. It got so there was no place to put the snow after it was plowed.
In the city section of the essays it is noted that New York City bestows the gift of loneliness and privacy. In 1939 there were eight million people in the five boroughs. In Florida it appears that the sun and the lizard maintain the same schedule. The tiny spots of the fiddler crab's body enlarge during the daytime hours. To have a pointsettia plant at Christmastime in
Florida seems faintly ridiculous. Pointsettias bloom naturally in the yards. A small chameleon arrives with the Whites' tropical substitute for a Christmas tree much to Mrs. White's delight.
In 1923 the author kept a diary of his trip to Alaska. A ship, docking at Seattle, was to go on a journey for forty days. He had only forty dollars, enough to traverse the inner passage to Skagway, and so he went. The Buford, for some of the passengers, became a high class floating jail because although food and scenery were good, there was no escape. Youthful, White absorbed the vast scene of Alaska. This was a trip promoted by the Chamber of Commerce, but White's roommate was another odd man to the enterprise, a Laplander. He was a reindeer butcher, going to a job in Nome. When the boat reached Skagway White's ticket ran out. The captain came up with the idea of putting him on as a night saloonsman. His metamorphosis took the passengers by surprise.
WALDEN is not a well-liked book among White's acquaintances. Thoreau was torn by two desires, to enjoy the world and to set the world straight. He tended to write in sentences, and WALDEN is a collection of certified sentences. I have tried to give the prospective reader some notion of the enjoyment to be obtained from reading White's essays.
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