Rating: 
Summary: America's Finest Collection of Essays in the 20th Century.
Review: Although he is best known for his children's books, including Charlotte's Web and the Trumpet of the Swan, author E.B. White's primary trade was the personal essay. In this remarkable collection, White brought together the premier essays of his seventy-year career, grouped into broad themes. This collection contains a mixture of period pieces from his years at the New Yorker magazine, including "Here is New York," and perceptive pieces on everyday events of life, such as "What Do Our Hearts Treasure?" Each essay brings a smart outlook toward life, an incredible ability to describe ordinary events vividly, and the melancholy and sentimental perspective that dominated White's life. This is undoubtedly the finest collection of American essays in the twentieth century.
Rating:
Summary: The best writer to ever walk the earth. No exceptions.
Review: Although many, if not most, know E.B. White for his children's books, it is in his essays and letters where he truly shines. Although many will equate or compare his work with Twain or even Thurber, White really is in a class by himself. What Ruth is to baseball, what Gretzky is to hockey, E.B. White is to American Letters.
Rating:
Summary: A Writer's Model
Review: And even if you aren't a "writer's writer" or a literature type, you will appreciate this collection. It will mostly make you wish we still had White. His "This is New York" is astonishing if only for its timeliness. In fact last September 11th I posted the an excerpt from it on one of my discussion groups. If you are an American Studies type, especially -- meaning that you are interested in what our culture looked like and cared about in the middle of this century -- this is the place to start.
Rating:
Summary: A Writer's Model
Review: And even if you aren't a "writer's writer" or a literature type, you will appreciate this collection. It will mostly make you wish we still had White. His "This is New York" is astonishing if only for its timeliness. In fact last September 11th I posted the an excerpt from it on one of my discussion groups. If you are an American Studies type, especially -- meaning that you are interested in what our culture looked like and cared about in the middle of this century -- this is the place to start.
Rating: 
Summary: wonderful
Review: E.B. White was my idol when I was in college getting my BA in English writing. I wanted to write just like him. I loved reading the stories about being on the farm. Those stories were my favorite. His informal and chatty style of writing is unbelievable. Anyone who hasn't read E.B. White's adult books is missing out.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: E.B. White's essays astounded me. My English teacher recommended them. I wasn't expecting prose of such rural vitality and simplicity. The group of essays under The Farm heading are a cry against urbanity. Instead of viewing everything as a commodity, he whispers emphatically a la Stein, "a rose is a rose is a rose." Throughout he has an eye for the sublimely trivial and the transcendence of Nature. Modernity is as barren as its aseptic kitchen counters.
The Thoreau influence is quite obvious, except for the causticity and spirituality which hasn't entered White's writing.
There is also the same sense of loss as in Thoreau's A Week...But it is a sense of loss with a quiet humanity that mitigates the seriousness. He doesn't avoid painful issues, unusual in our society.
He also never gets caught up in the wrongness of the world. At his most vituperative he is like a father correcting a wayward son. There is much to be learned from his simple yet profound wisdom. Excellent writing that I would recommend for anyone that reads.
Rating:
Summary: The second-best collection of 20th Century American Essays
Review: I couldn't agree with the above review more, except for the last statement. Actually, this is the second-best collection of American essays. The best is E.B. White's "One Man's Meat". White is a devastatingly good writer, regardless of subject or tone, and his essays can be read, re-read and pored over with nothing but greater appreciation at each subsequent read. Virtually anything written by him is bound to be entertaining, informative, enriching and subtle. You owe it to yourself to get to know this man.
Rating:
Summary: The second-best collection of 20th Century American Essays
Review: I couldn't agree with the above review more, except for the last statement. Actually, this is the second-best collection of American essays. The best is E.B. White's "One Man's Meat". White is a devastatingly good writer, regardless of subject or tone, and his essays can be read, re-read and pored over with nothing but greater appreciation at each subsequent read. Virtually anything written by him is bound to be entertaining, informative, enriching and subtle. You owe it to yourself to get to know this man.
Rating:
Summary: MAGNIFICENT ESSAYS
Review: I never read E.B. White as a child although all of my friends were very much into "Charlotte's Web" and "The Trumpet of the Swan." Perhaps it was because the only other Stuart I'd ever heard of was White's mouse/hero with the last name Little...a fact that my schoolmates teased me with throughout grade school..... White has got to be one of the finest writers I've ever read, expressing in 5 graceful words what it takes others paragraphs to do. His descriptions of life in Maine are priceless for anyone, like me, who has longed to let the country boy deep down inside sit back and "smell the roses." And,of course, Maine is still one of the few places in the U.S. that is relatively city poison-free. Read White's opening sentence in his brilliant "Here Is New York" which is, arguably, the best appreciation of this all-too-crazy city: "On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy." Where did he write those words? "...in a stifling hotel room in 90-degree heat, halfway down an air shaft, in midtown." At the end of this wonderful, wonderful essay (which, by the way has been re-printed, all by itself, in a beautifully illustrated paperback) White contemplates an old Willow tree in the Turtle Bay area and he writes, "This must be saved,this particular thing, this very tree. If it were to go, all would go--this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death." What other essayist expresses his thoughts and ours so unself-consciously, so economically and, yes, so magnificently? None that I have come across. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Rating:
Summary: MAGNIFICENT ESSAYS
Review: I never read E.B. White as a child although all of my friends were very much into "Charlotte's Web" and "The Trumpet of the Swan." Perhaps it was because the only other Stuart I'd ever heard of was White's mouse/hero with the last name Little...a fact that my schoolmates teased me with throughout grade school. .... White has got to be one of the finest writers I've ever read, expressing in 5 graceful words what it takes others paragraphs to do. His descriptions of life in Maine are priceless for anyone, like me, who has longed to let the country boy deep down inside sit back and "smell the roses." And,of course, Maine is still one of the few places in the U.S. that is relatively city poison-free. Read White's opening sentence in his brilliant "Here Is New York" which is, arguably, the best appreciation of this all-too-crazy city: "On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy." Where did he write those words? "...in a stifling hotel room in 90-degree heat, halfway down an air shaft, in midtown." At the end of this wonderful, wonderful essay (which, by the way has been re-printed, all by itself, in a beautifully illustrated paperback) White contemplates an old Willow tree in the Turtle Bay area and he writes, "This must be saved,this particular thing, this very tree. If it were to go, all would go--this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death." What other essayist expresses his thoughts and ours so unself-consciously, so economically and, yes, so magnificently? None that I have come across. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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