48 Reader-Approved New Essay Collections

"Essay collections are enjoying something of a renaissance these days. Perhaps it's all the genuinely amazing writers working in this short-form tradition in recent years. Or maybe it's a concession to the modern attention span?

Either way, we think this collection may be useful for the discerning book browser. We've gathered below the most popular essay collections on Goodreads from the past three years, as determined by readers' shelvings and ratings.

Click around and you'll find there's quite a nice variety: The very funny Samantha Irby is back on shelves this month with Quietly Hostile. Hanif Abdurraqib traces the history of Black performance in the U.S. with A Little Devil in America. Zadie Smith's rapid-response collection Intimations is generally considered one of the most important books to come out of the early COVID pandemic days. Or for a high-altitude view of the human condition, there's John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed."