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40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I wanted to improve my writing skills. I thought that reading the forty best essays of all time would bring me closer to my goal.

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

Reading essays is like indulging in candy; once you start, it’s hard to stop. I sought out essays that were not only well-crafted but also impactful. These pieces genuinely shifted my perspective. Whether you’re diving in for enjoyment or to hone your writing, these essays promise to leave an imprint. It’s fascinating how an essay can resonate with you, and even if details fade, its essence remains. I haven’t ranked them in any way; they’re all stellar. Skim through, explore the summaries, and pick up some writing tips along the way. For more essay gems, consider “Best American Essays” by Joyce Carol Oates or “101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think” curated by Brianna Wiest.

40 Best Essays of All Time (With Links And Writing Tips)

1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra.

A great family drama takes place against the backdrop of the Australian wilderness. And the Kookaburra laughs… This is one of the top essays of the lot. It’s a great mixture of family reminiscences, travel writing, and advice on what’s most important in life. You’ll also learn an awful lot about the curious culture of the Aussies.

Writing tips from the essay:

• Use analogies (you can make it funny or dramatic to achieve a better effect): “Don’t be afraid,” the waiter said, and he talked to the kookaburra in a soothing, respectful voice, the way you might to a child with a switchblade in his hand”.
• You can touch a few cognate stories in one piece of writing . Reveal the layers gradually. Intertwine them and arrange for a grand finale where everything is finally clear.
• Be on the side of the reader. Become their friend and tell the story naturally, like around the dinner table.
• Use short, punchy sentences. Tell only as much as is required to make your point vivid.
• Conjure sentences that create actual feelings: “I had on a sweater and a jacket, but they weren’t quite enough, and I shivered as we walked toward the body, and saw that it was a . . . what, exactly?”
• You may ask a few tough questions in a row to provoke interest and let the reader think.

2. Charles D’Ambrosio – Documents

Do you think your life punches you in the face all too often? After reading this essay, you will change your mind. Reading about loss and hardships often makes us sad at first, but then enables us to feel grateful for our lives . D’Ambrosio shares his documents (poems, letters) that had a major impact on his life, and brilliantly shows how not to let go of the past.

• The most powerful stories are about your family and the childhood moments that shaped your life.
• You don’t need to build up tension and pussyfoot around the crux of the matter. Instead, surprise the reader by telling it like it is: “The poem was an allegory about his desire to leave our family.” Or: “My father had three sons. I’m the eldest; Danny, the youngest, killed himself sixteen years ago”.
• You can use real documents and quotes from your family and friends. It makes it so much more personal and relatable.
• Don’t cringe before the long sentence if you know it’s a strong one.
• At the end of the essay, you may come back to the first theme to close the circuit.
• Using slightly poetic language is acceptable, as long as it improves the story.

3. E. B. White – Once more to the lake

What does it mean to be a father? Can you see your younger self, reflected in your child? This beautiful essay tells the story of the author, his son, and their traditional stay at a placid lake hidden within the forests of Maine. This place of nature is filled with sunshine and childhood memories. It also provides for one of the greatest meditations on nature and the passing of time.

• Use sophisticated language, but not at the expense of readability.
• Use vivid language to trigger the mirror neurons in the reader’s brain: “I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up his nose and who had seen lily pads only from train windows”.
• It’s important to mention universal feelings that are rarely talked about (it helps to create a bond between two minds): “You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing. I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings when the lake was cool and motionless”.
• Animate the inanimate: “this constant and trustworthy body of water”.
• Mentioning tales of yore is a good way to add some mystery and timelessness to your piece.
• Using double, or even triple “and” in one sentence is fine. It can make the sentence sing.

4. Zadie Smith – Fail Better

Aspiring writers feel tremendous pressure to perform. The daily quota of words often turns out to be nothing more than gibberish. What then? Also, should the writer please the reader or should she be fully independent? What does it mean to be a writer, anyway? This essay is an attempt to answer these questions, but its contents are not only meant for scribblers. Within it, you’ll find some great notes about literary criticism, how we treat art , and the responsibility of the reader.

• A perfect novel ? There’s no such thing.
• The novel always reflects the inner world of the writer. That’s why we’re fascinated with writers.
• Writing is not simply about craftsmanship, but about taking your reader to the unknown lands. In the words of Christopher Hitchens: “Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.”
• Style comes from your unique personality and the perception of the world. It takes time to develop it.
• Never try to tell it all. “All” can never be put into language. Take a part of it and tell it the best you can.
• Avoid being cliché. Try to infuse new life into your writing .
• Writing is about your way of being. It’s your game. Paradoxically, if you try to please everyone, your writing will become less appealing. You’ll lose the interest of the readers. This rule doesn’t apply in the business world where you have to write for a specific person (a target audience).
• As a reader, you have responsibilities too. According to the critics, every thirty years, there’s just a handful of great novels. Maybe it’s true. But there’s also an element of personal connection between the reader and the writer. That’s why for one person a novel is a marvel, while for the other, nothing special at all. That’s why you have to search and find the author who will touch you.

5. Virginia Woolf – Death of the Moth

Amid an ordinary day, sitting in a room of her own, Virginia Woolf tells about the epic struggle for survival and the evanescence of life. This short essay is truly powerful. In the beginning, the atmosphere is happy. Life is in full force. And then, suddenly, it fades away. This sense of melancholy would mark the last years of Woolf’s life.

• The melody of language… A good sentence is like music: “Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow- underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us”.
• You can show the grandest in the mundane (for example, the moth at your window and the drama of life and death).
• Using simple comparisons makes the style more lucid: “Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure”.

6. Meghan Daum – My Misspent Youth

Many of us, at some point or another, dream about living in New York. Meghan Daum’s take on the subject differs slightly from what you might expect. There’s no glamour, no Broadway shows, and no fancy restaurants. Instead, there’s the sullen reality of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. You’ll get all the juicy details about credit cards, overdue payments, and scrambling for survival. It’s a word of warning. But it’s also a great story about shattered fantasies of living in a big city. Word on the street is: “You ain’t promised mañana in the rotten manzana.”

• You can paint a picture of your former self. What did that person believe in? What kind of world did he or she live in?
• “The day that turned your life around” is a good theme you may use in a story. Memories of a special day are filled with emotions. Strong emotions often breed strong writing.
• Use cultural references and relevant slang to create a context for your story.
• You can tell all the details of the story, even if in some people’s eyes you’ll look like the dumbest motherfucker that ever lived. It adds to the originality.
• Say it in a new way: “In this mindset, the dollars spent, like the mechanics of a machine no one bothers to understand, become an abstraction, an intangible avenue toward self-expression, a mere vehicle of style”.
• You can mix your personal story with the zeitgeist or the ethos of the time.

7. Roger Ebert – Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Probably the greatest film critic of all time, Roger Ebert, tells us not to rage against the dying of the light. This essay is full of courage, erudition, and humanism. From it, we learn about what it means to be dying (Hitchens’ “Mortality” is another great work on that theme). But there’s so much more. It’s a great celebration of life too. It’s about not giving up, and sticking to your principles until the very end. It brings to mind the famous scene from Dead Poets Society where John Keating (Robin Williams) tells his students: “Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary”.

• Start with a powerful sentence: “I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.”
• Use quotes to prove your point -”‘Ask someone how they feel about death’, he said, ‘and they’ll tell you everyone’s gonna die’. Ask them, ‘In the next 30 seconds?’ No, no, no, that’s not gonna happen”.
• Admit the basic truths about reality in a childlike way (especially after pondering quantum physics) – “I believe my wristwatch exists, and even when I am unconscious, it is ticking all the same. You have to start somewhere”.
• Let other thinkers prove your point. Use quotes and ideas from your favorite authors and friends.

8. George Orwell – Shooting an Elephant

Even after one reading, you’ll remember this one for years. The story, set in British Burma, is about shooting an elephant (it’s not for the squeamish). It’s also the most powerful denunciation of colonialism ever put into writing. Orwell, apparently a free representative of British rule, feels to be nothing more than a puppet succumbing to the whim of the mob.

• The first sentence is the most important one: “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me”.
• You can use just the first paragraph to set the stage for the whole piece of prose.
• Use beautiful language that stirs the imagination: “I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.” Or: “I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have.”
• If you’ve ever been to war, you will have a story to tell: “(Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.)”
• Use simple words, and admit the sad truth only you can perceive: “They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching”.
• Share words of wisdom to add texture to the writing: “I perceived at this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his freedom that he destroys.”
• I highly recommend reading everything written by Orwell, especially if you’re looking for the best essay collections on Amazon or Goodreads.

9. George Orwell – A Hanging

It’s just another day in Burma – time to hang a man. Without much ado, Orwell recounts the grim reality of taking another person’s life. A man is taken from his cage and in a few minutes, he’s going to be hanged. The most horrible thing is the normality of it. It’s a powerful story about human nature. Also, there’s an extraordinary incident with the dog, but I won’t get ahead of myself.

• Create brilliant, yet short descriptions of characters: “He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting mustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the mustache of a comic man on the films”.
• Understand and share the felt presence of a unique experience: “It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man”.
• Make your readers hear the sound that will stay with them forever: “And then when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”
• Make the ending original by refusing the tendency to seek closure or summing it up.

10. Christopher Hitchens – Assassins of The Mind

In one of the greatest essays written in defense of free speech, Christopher Hitchens shares many examples of how modern media kneel to the explicit threats of violence posed by Islamic extremists. He recounts the story of his friend, Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses who, for many years, had to watch over his shoulder because of the fatwa of Ayatollah Khomeini. With his usual wit, Hitchens shares various examples of people who died because of their opinions and of editors who refuse to publish anything related to Islam because of fear (and it was written long before the Charlie Hebdo massacre). After reading the essay, you realize that freedom of expression is one of the most precious things we have and that we have to fight for it. I highly recommend all essay collections penned by Hitchens, especially the ones written for Vanity Fair.

• Assume that the readers will know the cultural references. When they do, their self-esteem goes up – they are a part of an insider group.
• When proving your point, give a variety of real-life examples from eclectic sources. Leave no room for ambiguity or vagueness. Research and overall knowledge are essential here.
• Use italics to emphasize a specific word or phrase (here I use the underlining): “We live now in a climate where every publisher and editor and politician has to weigh in advance the possibility of violent Muslim reprisal. In consequence, several things have not happened.”
• Think about how to make it sound more original: “So there is now a hidden partner in our cultural and academic and publishing and the broadcasting world: a shadowy figure that has, uninvited, drawn up a chair to the table.”

11. Christopher Hitchens – The New Commandments

It’s high time to shatter the tablets and amend the biblical rules of conduct. Watch, as Christopher Hitchens slays one commandment after the other on moral, as well as historical grounds. For example, did you know that there are many versions of the divine law dictated by God to Moses which you can find in the Bible? Aren’t we thus empowered to write our version of a proper moral code? If you approach it with an open mind, this essay may change the way you think about the Bible and religion.

• Take the iconoclastic approach. Have a party on the hallowed soil.
• Use humor to undermine orthodox ideas (it seems to be the best way to deal with an established authority).
• Use sarcasm and irony when appropriate (or not): “Nobody is opposed to a day of rest. The international Communist movement got its start by proclaiming a strike for an eight-hour day on May 1, 1886, against Christian employers who used child labor seven days a week”.
• Defeat God on legal grounds: “Wise lawmakers know that it is a mistake to promulgate legislation that is impossible to obey”.
• Be ruthless in the logic of your argument. Provide evidence.

12. Phillip Lopate – Against Joie de Vivre

While reading this fantastic essay, this quote from Slavoj Žižek kept coming back to me: “I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves”. I can bear the onus of happiness or joie de vivre for some time. But this force enables me to get free and wallow in the sweet feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. By reading this work of Lopate, you’ll enter into the world of an intelligent man who finds most social rituals a drag. It’s worth exploring.

• Go against the grain. Be flamboyant and controversial (if you can handle it).
• Treat the paragraph like a group of thoughts on one theme. Next paragraph, next theme.
• Use references to other artists to set the context and enrich the prose: “These sunny little canvases with their talented innocence, the third-generation spirit of Montmartre, bore testimony to a love of life so unbending as to leave an impression of rigid narrow-mindedness as extreme as any Savonarola. Their rejection of sorrow was total”.
• Capture the emotions in life that are universal, yet remain unspoken.
• Don’t be afraid to share your intimate experiences.

13. Philip Larkin – The Pleasure Principle

This piece comes from the Required Writing collection of personal essays. Larkin argues that reading in verse should be a source of intimate pleasure – not a medley of unintelligible thoughts that only the author can (or can’t?) decipher. It’s a sobering take on modern poetry and a great call to action for all those involved in it. Well worth a read.

• Write about complicated ideas (such as poetry) simply. You can change how people look at things if you express yourself enough.
• Go boldly. The reader wants a bold writer: “We seem to be producing a new kind of bad poetry, not the old kind that tries to move the reader and fails, but one that does not even try”.
• Play with words and sentence length. Create music: “It is time some of you playboys realized, says the judge, that reading a poem is hard work. Fourteen days in stir. Next case”.
• Persuade the reader to take action. Here, direct language is the most effective.

14. Sigmund Freud – Thoughts for the Times on War and Death

This essay reveals Freud’s disillusionment with the whole project of Western civilization. How the peaceful European countries could engage in a war that would eventually cost over 17 million lives? What stirs people to kill each other? Is it their nature, or are they puppets of imperial forces with agendas of their own? From the perspective of time, this work by Freud doesn’t seem to be fully accurate. Even so, it’s well worth your time.

• Commence with long words derived from Latin. Get grandiloquent, make your argument incontrovertible, and leave your audience discombobulated.
• Use unending sentences, so that the reader feels confused, yet impressed.
• Say it well: “In this way, he enjoyed the blue sea and the grey; the beauty of snow-covered mountains and green meadowlands; the magic of northern forests and the splendor of southern vegetation; the mood evoked by landscapes that recall great historical events, and the silence of untouched nature”.
• Human nature is a subject that never gets dry.

15. Zadie Smith – Some Notes on Attunement

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

• Build an expectation of what’s coming: “The first time I heard her I didn’t hear her at all”.
• Don’t be afraid of repetition if it feels good.
• Psychedelic drugs let you appreciate things you never appreciated.
• Intertwine a personal journey with philosophical musings.
• Show rather than tell: “My friends pitied their eyes. The same look the faithful give you as you hand them back their “literature” and close the door in their faces”.
• Let the poets speak for you: “That time is past, / And all its aching joys are now no
• more, / And all its dizzy raptures”.
• By voicing your anxieties, you can heal the anxieties of the reader. In that way, you say: “I’m just like you. I’m your friend in this struggle”.
• Admit your flaws to make your persona more relatable.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

My imagination was always stirred by the scene of the solar eclipse in Pharaoh, by Boleslaw Prus. I wondered about the shock of the disoriented crowd when they saw how their ruler could switch off the light. Getting immersed in this essay by Annie Dillard has a similar effect. It produces amazement and some kind of primeval fear. It’s not only the environment that changes; it’s your mind and the perception of the world. After the eclipse, nothing is going to be the same again.

• Yet again, the power of the first sentence draws you in: “It had been like dying, that sliding down the mountain pass”.
• Don’t miss the extraordinary scene. Then describe it: “Up in the sky, like a crater from some distant cataclysm, was a hollow ring”.
• Use colloquial language. Write as you talk. Short sentences often win.
• Contrast the numinous with the mundane to enthrall the reader.

17. Édouard Levé – When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue

This suicidally beautiful essay will teach you a lot about the appreciation of life and the struggle with mental illness. It’s a collection of personal, apparently unrelated thoughts that show us the rich interior of the author. You look at the real-time thoughts of another person, and then recognize the same patterns within yourself… It sounds like a confession of a person who’s about to take their life, and it’s striking in its originality.

• Use the stream-of-consciousness technique and put random thoughts on paper. Then, polish them: “I have attempted suicide once, I’ve been tempted four times to attempt it”.
• Place the treasure deep within the story: “When I look at a strawberry, I think of a tongue, when I lick one, of a kiss”.
• Don’t worry about what people might think. The more you expose, the more powerful the writing. Readers also take part in the great drama. They experience universal emotions that mostly stay inside.  You can translate them into writing.

18. Gloria E. Anzaldúa – How to Tame a Wild Tongue

Anzaldúa, who was born in south Texas, had to struggle to find her true identity. She was American, but her culture was grounded in Mexico. In this way, she and her people were not fully respected in either of the countries. This essay is an account of her journey of becoming the ambassador of the Chicano (Mexican-American) culture. It’s full of anecdotes, interesting references, and different shades of Spanish. It’s a window into a new cultural dimension that you’ve never experienced before.

• If your mother tongue is not English, but you write in English, use some of your unique homeland vocabulary.
• You come from a rich cultural heritage. You can share it with people who never heard about it, and are not even looking for it, but it is of immense value to them when they discover it.
• Never forget about your identity. It is precious. It is a part of who you are. Even if you migrate, try to preserve it. Use it to your best advantage and become the voice of other people in the same situation.
• Tell them what’s really on your mind: “So if you want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language”.

19. Kurt Vonnegut – Dispatch From A Man Without a Country

In terms of style, this essay is flawless. It’s simple, conversational, humorous, and yet, full of wisdom. And when Vonnegut becomes a teacher and draws an axis of “beginning – end”, and, “good fortune – bad fortune” to explain literature, it becomes outright hilarious. It’s hard to find an author with such a down-to-earth approach. He doesn’t need to get intellectual to prove a point. And the point could be summed up by the quote from Great Expectations – “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip – such is Life!”

• Start with a curious question: “Do you know what a twerp is?”
• Surprise your readers with uncanny analogies: “I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. It’s as though I had taken over the family Esso station.”
• Use your natural language without too many special effects. In time, the style will crystalize.
• An amusing lesson in writing from Mr. Vonnegut: “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college”.
• You can put actual images or vignettes between the paragraphs to illustrate something.

20. Mary Ruefle – On Fear

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

• Research your subject thoroughly. Ask people, have interviews, get expert opinions, and gather as much information as possible. Then scavenge through the fields of data, and pull out the golden bits that will let your prose shine.
• Use powerful quotes to add color to your story: “The poet who embarks on the creation of the poem (as I know by experience), begins with the aimless sensation of a hunter about to embark on a night hunt through the remotest of forests. Unaccountable dread stirs in his heart”. – Lorca.
• Writing advice from the essay: “One of the fears a young writer has is not being able to write as well as he or she wants to, the fear of not being able to sound like X or Y, a favorite author. But out of fear, hopefully, is born a young writer’s voice”.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

In this highly intellectual essay, Sontag fights for art and its interpretation. It’s a great lesson, especially for critics and interpreters who endlessly chew on works that simply defy interpretation. Why don’t we just leave the art alone? I always hated it when at school they asked me: “What did the author have in mind when he did X or Y?” Iēsous Pantocrator! Hell if I know! I will judge it through my subjective experience!

• Leave the art alone: “Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities”.
• When you have something really important to say, style matters less.
• There’s no use in creating a second meaning or inviting interpretation of our art. Just leave it be and let it speak for itself.

22. Nora Ephron – A Few Words About Breasts

This is a heartwarming, coming-of-age story about a young girl who waits in vain for her breasts to grow. It’s simply a humorous and pleasurable read. The size of breasts is a big deal for women. If you’re a man, you may peek into the mind of a woman and learn many interesting things. If you’re a woman, maybe you’ll be able to relate and at last, be at peace with your bosom.

• Touch an interesting subject and establish a strong connection with the readers (in that case, women with small breasts). Let your personality shine through the written piece. If you are lighthearted, show it.
• Use hyphens to create an impression of real talk: “My house was full of apples and peaches and milk and homemade chocolate chip cookies – which were nice, and good for you, but-not-right-before-dinner-or-you’ll-spoil-your-appetite.”
• Use present tense when you tell a story to add more life to it.
• Share the pronounced, memorable traits of characters: “A previous girlfriend named Solange, who was famous throughout Beverly Hills High School for having no pigment in her right eyebrow, had knitted them for him (angora dice)”.

23. Carl Sagan – Does Truth Matter – Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization

Carl Sagan was one of the greatest proponents of skepticism, and an author of numerous books, including one of my all-time favorites – The Demon-Haunted World . He was also a renowned physicist and the host of the fantastic Cosmos: A Personal Voyage series, which inspired a whole generation to uncover the mysteries of the cosmos. He was also a dedicated weed smoker – clearly ahead of his time. The essay that you’re about to read is a crystallization of his views about true science, and why you should check the evidence before believing in UFOs or similar sorts of crap.

• Tell people the brutal truth they need to hear. Be the one who spells it out for them.
• Give a multitude of examples to prove your point. Giving hard facts helps to establish trust with the readers and show the veracity of your arguments.
• Recommend a good book that will change your reader’s minds – How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life

24. Paul Graham – How To Do What You Love

How To Do What You Love should be read by every college student and young adult. The Internet is flooded with a large number of articles and videos that are supposed to tell you what to do with your life. Most of them are worthless, but this one is different. It’s sincere, and there’s no hidden agenda behind it. There’s so much we take for granted – what we study, where we work, what we do in our free time… Surely we have another two hundred years to figure it out, right? Life’s too short to be so naïve. Please, read the essay and let it help you gain fulfillment from your work.

• Ask simple, yet thought-provoking questions (especially at the beginning of the paragraph) to engage the reader: “How much are you supposed to like what you do?”
• Let the readers question their basic assumptions: “Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like”.
• If you’re writing for a younger audience, you can act as a mentor. It’s beneficial for younger people to read a few words of advice from a person with experience.

25. John Jeremiah Sullivan – Mister Lytle

A young, aspiring writer is about to become a nurse of a fading writer – Mister Lytle (Andrew Nelson Lytle), and there will be trouble. This essay by Sullivan is probably my favorite one from the whole list. The amount of beautiful sentences it contains is just overwhelming. But that’s just a part of its charm. It also takes you to the Old South which has an incredible atmosphere. It’s grim and tawny but you want to stay there for a while.

• Short, distinct sentences are often the most powerful ones: “He had a deathbed, in other words. He didn’t go suddenly”.
• Stay consistent with the mood of the story. When reading Mister Lytle you are immersed in that southern, forsaken, gloomy world, and it’s a pleasure.
• The spectacular language that captures it all: “His French was superb, but his accent in English was best—that extinct mid-Southern, land-grant pioneer speech, with its tinges of the abandoned Celtic urban Northeast (“boned” for burned) and its raw gentility”.
• This essay is just too good. You have to read it.

26. Joan Didion – On Self Respect

Normally, with that title, you would expect some straightforward advice about how to improve your character and get on with your goddamn life – but not from Joan Didion. From the very beginning, you can feel the depth of her thinking, and the unmistakable style of a true woman who’s been hurt. You can learn more from this essay than from whole books about self-improvement . It reminds me of the scene from True Detective, where Frank Semyon tells Ray Velcoro to “own it” after he realizes he killed the wrong man all these years ago. I guess we all have to “own it”, recognize our mistakes, and move forward sometimes.

• Share your moral advice: “Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs”.
• It’s worth exploring the subject further from a different angle. It doesn’t matter how many people have already written on self-respect or self-reliance – you can still write passionately about it.
• Whatever happens, you must take responsibility for it. Brave the storms of discontent.

27. Susan Sontag – Notes on Camp

I’ve never read anything so thorough and lucid about an artistic current. After reading this essay, you will know what camp is. But not only that – you will learn about so many artists you’ve never heard of. You will follow their traces and go to places where you’ve never been before. You will vastly increase your appreciation of art. It’s interesting how something written as a list could be so amazing. All the listicles we usually see on the web simply cannot compare with it.

• Talking about artistic sensibilities is a tough job. When you read the essay, you will see how much research, thought and raw intellect came into it. But that’s one of the reasons why people still read it today, even though it was written in 1964.
• You can choose an unorthodox way of expression in the medium for which you produce. For example, Notes on Camp is a listicle – one of the most popular content formats on the web. But in the olden days, it was uncommon to see it in print form.
• Just think about what is camp: “And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience. Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling”.

28. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance

That’s the oldest one from the lot. Written in 1841, it still inspires generations of people. It will let you understand what it means to be self-made. It contains some of the most memorable quotes of all time. I don’t know why, but this one especially touched me: “Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design, and posterity seems to follow his steps as a train of clients”. Now isn’t it purely individualistic, American thought? Emerson told me (and he will tell you) to do something amazing with my life. The language it contains is a bit archaic, but that just adds to the weight of the argument. You can consider it to be a meeting with a great philosopher who shaped the ethos of the modern United States.

• You can start with a powerful poem that will set the stage for your work.
• Be free in your creative flow. Do not wait for the approval of others: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness”.
• Use rhetorical questions to strengthen your argument: “I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly say a new and spontaneous word?”

29. David Foster Wallace – Consider The Lobster

When you want simple field notes about a food festival, you needn’t send there the formidable David Foster Wallace. He sees right through the hypocrisy and cruelty behind killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lobsters – by boiling them alive. This essay uncovers some of the worst traits of modern American people. There are no apologies or hedging one’s bets. There’s just plain truth that stabs you in the eye like a lobster claw. After reading this essay, you may reconsider the whole animal-eating business.

• When it’s important, say it plainly and stagger the reader: “[Lobsters] survive right up until they’re boiled. Most of us have been in supermarkets or restaurants that feature tanks of live lobster, from which you can pick out your supper while it watches you point”.
• In your writing, put exact quotes of the people you’ve been interviewing (including slang and grammatical errors). It makes it more vivid, and interesting.
• You can use humor in serious situations to make your story grotesque.
• Use captions to expound on interesting points of your essay.

30. David Foster Wallace – The Nature of the Fun

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

• Base your point on a chimerical analogy. Here, the writer’s unfinished work is a “hideously damaged infant”.
• Even in expository writing, you may share an interesting story to keep things lively.
• Share your true emotions (even when you think they won’t interest anyone). Often, that’s exactly what will interest the reader.
• Read the whole essay for marvelous advice on writing fiction.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

This is not an essay per se, but I included it on the list for the sake of variety. It was delivered as a commencement speech at The University of Toronto, and it’s about keeping the right attitude. Soon after leaving university, most graduates have to forget about safety, parties, and travel and start a new life – one filled with a painful routine that will last until they drop. Atwood says that you don’t have to accept that. You can choose how you react to everything that happens to you (and you don’t have to stay in that dead-end job for the rest of your days).

• At times, we are all too eager to persuade, but the strongest persuasion is not forceful. It’s subtle. It speaks to the heart. It affects you gradually.
• You may be tempted to talk about a subject by first stating what it is not, rather than what it is. Try to avoid that.
• Simple advice for writers (and life in general): “When faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it”.

32. Jo Ann Beard – The Fourth State of Matter

Read that one as soon as possible. It’s one of the most masterful and impactful essays you’ll ever read. It’s like a good horror – a slow build-up, and then your jaw drops to the ground. To summarize the story would be to spoil it, so I recommend that you just dig in and devour this essay in one sitting. It’s a perfect example of “show, don’t tell” writing, where the actions of characters are enough to create the right effect. No need for flowery adjectives here.

• The best story you will tell is going to come from your personal experience.
• Use mysteries that will nag the reader. For example, at the beginning of the essay, we learn about the “vanished husband” but there’s no explanation. We have to keep reading to get the answer.
• Explain it in simple terms: “You’ve got your solid, your liquid, your gas, and then your plasma”. Why complicate?

33. Terence McKenna – Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness

To me, Terence McKenna was one of the most interesting thinkers of the twentieth century. His many lectures (now available on YouTube) attracted millions of people who suspect that consciousness holds secrets yet to be unveiled. McKenna consumed psychedelic drugs for most of his life and it shows (in a positive way). Many people consider him a looney, and a hippie, but he was so much more than that. He dared to go into the abyss of his psyche and come back to tell the tale. He also wrote many books (the most famous being Food Of The Gods ), built a huge botanical garden in Hawaii , lived with shamans, and was a connoisseur of all things enigmatic and obscure. Take a look at this essay, and learn more about the explorations of the subconscious mind.

• Become the original thinker, but remember that it may require extraordinary measures: “I call myself an explorer rather than a scientist because the area that I’m looking at contains insufficient data to support even the dream of being a science”.
• Learn new words every day to make your thoughts lucid.
• Come up with the most outlandish ideas to push the envelope of what’s possible. Don’t take things for granted or become intellectually lazy. Question everything.

34. Eudora Welty – The Little Store

By reading this little-known essay, you will be transported into the world of the old American South. It’s a remembrance of trips to the little store in a little town. It’s warm and straightforward, and when you read it, you feel like a child once more. All these beautiful memories live inside of us. They lay somewhere deep in our minds, hidden from sight. The work by Eudora Welty is an attempt to uncover some of them and let you get reacquainted with some smells and tastes of the past.

• When you’re from the South, flaunt it. It’s still good old English but sometimes it sounds so foreign. I can hear the Southern accent too: “There were almost tangible smells – licorice recently sucked in a child’s cheek, dill-pickle brine that had leaked through a paper sack in a fresh trail across the wooden floor, ammonia-loaded ice that had been hoisted from wet Croker sacks and slammed into the icebox with its sweet butter at the door, and perhaps the smell of still-untrapped mice”.
• Yet again, never forget your roots.
• Childhood stories can be the most powerful ones. You can write about how they shaped you.

35. John McPhee – The Search for Marvin Gardens

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

• There’s nothing like irony: “A sign- ‘Slow, Children at Play’- has been bent backward by an automobile”.
• Telling the story in apparently unrelated fragments is sometimes better than telling the whole thing in a logical order.
• Creativity is everything. The best writing may come just from connecting two ideas and mixing them to achieve a great effect. Shush! The muse is whispering.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

A dead body at the bottom of the well makes for a beautiful literary device. The first line of Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name Is Red delivers it perfectly: “I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well”. There’s something creepy about the idea of the well. Just think about the “It puts the lotion in the basket” scene from The Silence of the Lambs. In the first paragraph of Kingston’s essay, we learn about a suicide committed by uncommon means of jumping into the well. But this time it’s a real story. Who was this woman? Why did she do it? Read the essay.

• Mysterious death always gets attention. The macabre details are like daiquiris on a hot day – you savor them – you don’t let them spill.
• One sentence can speak volumes: “But the rare urge west had fixed upon our family, and so my aunt crossed boundaries not delineated in space”.
• It’s interesting to write about cultural differences – especially if you have the relevant experience. Something normal for us is unthinkable for others. Show this different world.
• The subject of sex is never boring.

37. Joan Didion – On Keeping A Notebook

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is one of the most famous collections of essays of all time. In it, you will find a curious piece called On Keeping A Notebook. It’s not only a meditation about keeping a journal. It’s also Didion’s reconciliation with her past self. After reading it, you will seriously reconsider your life’s choices and look at your life from a wider perspective.

• When you write things down in your journal, be more specific – unless you want to write a deep essay about it years later.
• Use the beauty of the language to relate to the past: “I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing ‘How High the Moon’ on the car radio”.
• Drop some brand names if you want to feel posh.

38. Joan Didion – Goodbye To All That

This one touched me because I also lived in New York City for a while. I don’t know why, but stories about life in NYC are so often full of charm and this eerie-melancholy-jazz feeling. They are powerful. They go like this: “There was a hard blizzard in NYC. As the sound of sirens faded, Tony descended into the dark world of hustlers and pimps.” That’s pulp literature but in the context of NYC, it always sounds cool. Anyway, this essay is amazing in too many ways. You just have to read it.

• Talk about New York City. They will read it.
• Talk about the human experience: “It did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young?”
• Look back at your life and reexamine it. Draw lessons from it.

39. George Orwell – Reflections on Gandhi

George Orwell could see things as they were. No exaggeration, no romanticism – just facts. He recognized totalitarianism and communism for what they were and shared his worries through books like 1984 and Animal Farm . He took the same sober approach when dealing with saints and sages. Today, we regard Gandhi as one of the greatest political leaders of the twentieth century – and rightfully so. But did you know that when asked about the Jews during World War II, Gandhi said that they should commit collective suicide and that it: “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” He also recommended utter pacifism in 1942, during the Japanese invasion, even though he knew it would cost millions of lives. But overall he was a good guy. Read the essay and broaden your perspective on the Bapu of the Indian Nation.

• Share a philosophical thought that stops the reader for a moment: “No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid”.
• Be straightforward in your writing – no mannerisms, no attempts to create ‘style’, and no invocations of the numinous – unless you feel the mystical vibe.

40. George Orwell – Politics and the English Language

Let Mr. Orwell give you some writing tips. Written in 1946, this essay is still one of the most helpful documents on writing in English. Orwell was probably the first person who exposed the deliberate vagueness of political language. He was very serious about it and I admire his efforts to slay all unclear sentences (including ones written by distinguished professors). But it’s good to make it humorous too from time to time. My favorite examples of that would be the immortal Soft Language sketch by George Carlin or the “Romans Go Home” scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Overall, it’s a great essay filled with examples from many written materials. It’s a must-read for any writer.

• Listen to the master: “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose.” Do something about it.
• This essay is all about writing better, so go to the source if you want the goodies.

Other Essays You May Find Interesting

The list that I’ve prepared is by no means complete. The literary world is full of exciting essays and you’ll never know which one is going to change your life. I’ve found reading essays very rewarding because sometimes, a single one means more than reading a whole book. It’s almost like wandering around and peeking into the minds of the greatest writers and thinkers that ever lived. To make this list more comprehensive, below I included more essays you may find interesting.

Oliver Sacks – On Libraries

One of the greatest contributors to the knowledge about the human mind, Oliver Sacks meditates on the value of libraries and his love of books.

Noam Chomsky – The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Chomsky did probably more than anyone else to define the role of the intelligentsia in the modern world . There is a war of ideas over there – good and bad – intellectuals are going to be those who ought to be fighting for the former.

Sam Harris – The Riddle of The Gun

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

This piece was written as a blog post , but it’s worth your time. The author of the NYT bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek shares an emotional story about how he almost killed himself, and what can you do to save yourself or your friends from suicide.

Edward Said – Reflections on Exile

The life of Edward Said was a truly fascinating one. Born in Jerusalem, he lived between Palestine and Egypt and finally settled down in the United States, where he completed his most famous work – Orientalism. In this essay, he shares his thoughts about what it means to be in exile.

Richard Feynman – It’s as Simple as One, Two, Three…

Richard Feynman is one of the most interesting minds of the twentieth century. He was a brilliant physicist, but also an undeniably great communicator of science, an artist, and a traveler. By reading this essay, you can observe his thought process when he tries to figure out what affects our perception of time. It’s a truly fascinating read.

Rabindranath Tagore – The Religion of The Forest

I like to think about Tagore as my spiritual Friend. His poems are just marvelous. They are like some of the Persian verses that praise love, nature, and the unity of all things. By reading this short essay, you will learn a lot about Indian philosophy and its relation to its Western counterpart.

Richard Dawkins – Letter To His 10-Year-Old Daughter

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Each person requires a period of solitude – a period when one’s able to gather thoughts and make sense of life. There are many places where you may attempt to find quietude. Albert Camus tells about his favorite one.

Koty Neelis – 21 Incredible Life Lessons From Anthony Bourdain

I included it as the last one because it’s not really an essay, but I just had to put it somewhere. In this listicle, you’ll find the 21 most original thoughts of the high-profile cook, writer, and TV host, Anthony Bourdain. Some of them are shocking, others are funny, but they’re all worth checking out.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca – On the Shortness of Life

It’s similar to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam because it praises life. Seneca shares some of his stoic philosophy and tells you not to waste your time on stupidities. Drink! – for once dead you shall never return.

Bertrand Russell – In Praise of Idleness

This old essay is a must-read for modern humans. We are so preoccupied with our work, our phones, and all the media input we drown in our business. Bertrand Russell tells you to chill out a bit – maybe it will do you some good.

James Baldwin – Stranger in the Village

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

Bonus – More writing tips from two great books

The mission to improve my writing skills took me further than just going through the essays. I’ve come across some great books on writing too. I highly recommend you read them in their entirety. They’re written beautifully and contain lots of useful knowledge. Below you’ll find random (but useful) notes that I took from The Sense of Style and On Writing.

The Sense of Style – By Steven Pinker

• Style manuals are full of inconsistencies. Following their advice might not be the best idea. They might make your prose boring.
• Grammarians from all eras condemn students for not knowing grammar. But it just evolves. It cannot be rigid.
• “Nothing worth learning can be taught” – Oscar Wilde. It’s hard to learn to write from a manual – you have to read, write, and analyze.
• Good writing makes you imagine things and feel them for yourself – use word pictures.
• Don’t fear using voluptuous words.
• Phonesthetics – or how the words sound.
• Use parallel language (consistency of tense).
• Good writing finishes strong.
• Write to someone. Never write for no one in mind. Try to show people your view of the world.
• Don’t tell everything you are going to say in summary (signposting) – be logical, but be conversational.
• Don’t be pompous.
• Don’t use quotation marks where they don’t “belong”. Be confident about your style.
• Don’t hedge your claims (research first, and then tell it like it is).
• Avoid clichés and meta-concepts (concepts about concepts). Be more straightforward!
• Not prevention – but prevents or prevented – don’t use dead nouns.
• Be more vivid while using your mother tongue – don’t use passive where it’s not needed. Direct the reader’s gaze to something in the world.
• The curse of knowledge – the reader doesn’t know what you know – beware of that.
• Explain technical terms.
• Use examples when you explain a difficult term.
• If you ever say “I think I understand this” it probably means you don’t.
• It’s better to underestimate the lingo of your readers than to overestimate it.
• Functional fixedness – if we know some object (or idea) well, we tend to see it in terms of usage, not just as an object.
• Use concrete language instead of an abstraction.
• Show your work to people before you publish (get feedback!).
• Wait for a few days and then revise, revise, revise. Think about clarity and the sound of sentences. Then show it to someone. Then revise one more time. Then publish (if it’s to be serious work).
• Look at it from the perspective of other people.
• Omit needless words.
• Put the heaviest words at the end of the sentence.
• It’s good to use the passive, but only when appropriate.
• Check all text for cohesion. Make sure that the sentences flow gently.
• In expository work, go from general to more specific. But in journalism start from the big news and then give more details.
• Use the paragraph break to give the reader a moment to take a breath.
• Use the verb instead of a noun (make it more active) – not “cancellation”, but “canceled”. But after you introduce the action, you can refer to it with a noun.
• Avoid too many negations.
• If you write about why something is so, don’t spend too much time writing about why it is not.

On Writing Well – By William Zinsser

• Writing is a craft. You need to sit down every day and practice your craft.
• You should re-write and polish your prose a lot.
• Throw out all the clutter. Don’t keep it because you like it. Aim for readability.
• Look at the best examples of English literature . There’s hardly any needless garbage there.
• Use shorter expressions. Don’t add extra words that don’t bring any value to your work.
• Don’t use pompous language. Use simple language and say plainly what’s going on (“because” equals “because”).
• The media and politics are full of cluttered prose (because it helps them to cover up for their mistakes).
• You can’t add style to your work (and especially, don’t add fancy words to create an illusion of style). That will look fake. You need to develop a style.
• Write in the “I” mode. Write to a friend or just for yourself. Show your personality. There is a person behind the writing.
• Choose your words carefully. Use the dictionary to learn different shades of meaning.
• Remember about phonology. Make music with words .
• The lead is essential. Pull the reader in. Otherwise, your article is dead.
• You don’t have to make the final judgment on any topic. Just pick the right angle.
• Do your research. Not just obvious research, but a deep one.
• When it’s time to stop, stop. And finish strong. Think about the last sentence. Surprise them.
• Use quotations. Ask people. Get them talking.
• If you write about travel, it must be significant to the reader. Don’t bother with the obvious. Choose your words with special care. Avoid travel clichés at all costs. Don’t tell that the sand was white and there were rocks on the beach. Look for the right detail.
• If you want to learn how to write about art, travel, science, etc. – read the best examples available. Learn from the masters.
• Concentrate on one big idea (“Let’s not go peeing down both legs”).
• “The reader has to feel that the writer is feeling good.”
• One very helpful question: “What is the piece really about?” (Not just “What the piece is about?”)

Now immerse yourself in the world of essays

By reading the essays from the list above, you’ll become a better writer , a better reader, but also a better person. An essay is a special form of writing. It is the only literary form that I know of that is an absolute requirement for career or educational advancement. Nowadays, you can use an AI essay writer or an AI essay generator that will get the writing done for you, but if you have personal integrity and strong moral principles, avoid doing this at all costs. For me as a writer, the effect of these authors’ masterpieces is often deeply personal. You won’t be able to find the beautiful thoughts they contain in any other literary form. I hope you enjoy the read and that it will inspire you to do your writing. This list is only an attempt to share some of the best essays available online. Next up, you may want to check the list of magazines and websites that accept personal essays .

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Bad feminist by roxane gay, what the hell am i (and who the hell cares) by neko case, 10 more great articles about feminism, men explain things to me by rebecca solnit, the end of men by hanna rosin, 10 more great articles about men, linguistics/language, who decides what words mean by lane greene, the world’s most efficient languages by john mcwhorter, tense present by david foster wallace, 40 more great articles about linguistics, pigeon wars by jon mooallem, violence of the lambs by john j. sullivan, 25 more great articles about animals, quitting the paint factory by mark slouka, nickel and dimed by barbara ehrenreich, shop class as soul craft by matthew b. crawford, 40 more great articles about work, to have is to owe by david graeber, why does it feel like everyone has more money than you by jen doll, the austerity delusion by paul krugman, the blind side by michael lewis, 25 more great articles about money, science & technology, how life (and death) spring from disorder by philip ball, a compassionate substance by philip ball, your handy postcard-sized guide to statistics by tim harford, on being the right size by j. b. s. haldane, 100 more great science & tech. articles, the environment, the fate of earth by elizabeth kolbert, state of the species by charles c. mann, the real reason humans are the dominant species by justin rowlatt and laurence knight, 30 more great reads about the environment, climate change, losing earth by nathaniel rich, sixty years of climate change warnings by alice bell, beyond catastrophe by david wallace wells, we should fix climate change — but we should not regret it by thomas r. wells, 35 more great climate change articles, the tinkering of robert noyce by tom wolfe, creation myth by malcolm gladwell, mother earth mother board by neal stephenson, i saw the face of god in a semiconductor factory by virginia heffernan, 50 more great articles about computers, the internet, forty years of the internet by oliver burkeman, escape the matrix by virginia heffernan, you are the product by john lanchester, a nation of echo chambers by will leitch, the long tail by chris anderson, 50 more articles about the internet.

Social Media

The machine always wins by richard seymour, my instagram by dayna tortorici, why the past 10 years of american life have been uniquely stupid by jonathan haidt, 15 more articles about social media, m by john sack, blackhawk down by mark bowden, hiroshima by john hersey, the ai-powered, totally autonomous future of war is here by will knight, 35 more great articles about war, the hinge of history by joan didion, how america lost its mind by kurt andersen, the problem with facts by tim harford, constant anxiety won't save the world by julie beck, 75 more great articles about politics, crime & punishment, the caging of america by adam gopnik, the crooked ladder by malcolm gladwell, cruel and unusual punishment by matt taibbi, 20 more great articles about crime, the body in room 348 by mark bowden, the art of the steal by joshua bearman, true crime by david grann, the crypto trap by andy greenberg, 35 more great true crime stories, does it help to know history by adam gopnik, 1491 by charles c. mann, a history of violence by steven pinker, the worst mistake in history by j. diamond, 25 more great articles about history, notes of a native son by james baldwin, how to slowly kill yourself and others in america by kiese laymon, magic actions by tobi haslett, 30 more great essays about race, cities and ambition by paul graham, here is new york by e. b. white, 25 more great articles about cities, we are all confident idiots by david dunning, fantastic beasts and how to rank them by kathryn schulz, the problem with p-values by david colquhoun, what is the monkeysphere by david wong, 100 more great psychology articles, love & relationships, love by lauren slater, masters of love by emily esfahani smith, this is emo by chuck klosterman, 50 more great articles about relationships, what makes us happy by joshua shenk, social connection makes a better brain by emily esfahani smith, the real roots of midlife crisis by jonathan rauch, 20 more great articles about happiness, success & failure, you can do it, baby by leslie garrett, what drives success by amy chua and jed rubenfeld, the fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination by j.k. rowling, 10 more great articles about success, health & medicine, somewhere worse by jia tolentino, race to the vaccine by david heath and gus garcia-roberts, an epidemic of fear by amy wallace the score by atul gawande, 50 more great articles about health, mental health, darkness visible by william styron, the epidemic of mental illness by marcia angell, surviving anxiety by scott stossel, 50 more great articles about mental health, the moral instinct by steven pinker, not nothing by stephen cave, the greatest good by derek thompson, 15 more great articles about ethics, getting in by malcolm gladwell, learning by degrees by rebecca mead, the end of the english major by nathan heller, 20 more great articles about education, the string theory by david foster wallace, the istanbul derby by spencer hall, the kentucky derby is decadent and depraved by hunter s. thompson, 50 more great sports articles, why does music make us feel good by philip ball, one more time by elizabeth margulis, how to be a rock critic by lester bangs, 50 more great music articles, the arts & culture, inhaling the spore by lawrence weschler, death by harry potter by chuck klosterman, a one-man art market by bryan aappleyard, welcome to airspace by kyle chayka, 35 more great articles about the arts, fx porn by david foster wallace, flick chicks by mindy kaling, the movie set that ate itself by michael idov, 15 more great articles about movies, the last meal by michael paterniti, if you knew sushi by nick tosches, consider the lobster by david foster wallace, 50 more great articles about food.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The last american hero is junior johnson. yes by tom wolfe, masters of the universe go to camp by philip weiss, what is glitter by caity weaver.

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The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era.  –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it.  –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read.  –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.”  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture.  –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think.  –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief 

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done.  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay  Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions  was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel  Lost Children Archive  (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a  good  conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment.  Tell Me How It Ends  is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country.  –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.”  –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital.  –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing  Bad Feminist  that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell.  This Young Monster  (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from  Artforum ,  Dazed & Confused , and  Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic,  This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) ·  Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012)  · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014)  · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014)  · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014)  · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) ·  Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016)  · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016)  · Lindy West, Shrill (2016)  · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016)  · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016)  · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016)  · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016)  · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017)  · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017)  · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017)  · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017)  · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017)  · Joan Didion, South and West (2017)  · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017)  · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017)  · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017)  ·  Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017)  · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018)  · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018)  · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018)  · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018)  · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018)  · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018)  · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019)  · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019)  · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019)  · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019)  · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019)  ·  Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019)  · Robert A. Caro,  Working  (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

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Make Lists, Not War

The meta-lists website, best essays of all time – ranked.

A reader suggested I create a meta-list of the best essays of all time, so I did.  I found over 12 best essays lists and several essay anthologies and combined the essays into one meta-list.  The meta-list below includes every essay that was on at least two of the original source lists. They are organized by rank, that is, with the essays on the most lists at the top. To see the same list organized chronologically, go HERE .

Note 1:  Some of the essays are actually chapters from books.  In such cases, I have identified the source book.

Note 2: Some of the essays are book-length, such as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own .  One book listed as an essay by two listers – Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet – is also regularly categorized as a work of fiction.

On 11 lists James Baldwin – Notes of a Native Son (1955)

On 6 lists George Orwell – Shooting an Elephant (1936) E.B. White – Once More to the Lake (1941) Joan Didion – Goodbye To All That (1968)

On 5 lists Joan Didion – On Keeping A Notebook (1968) Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse (1982) Jo Ann Beard – The Fourth State of Matter (1996) David Foster Wallace – A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again (1996)

On 4 lists William Hazlitt – On the Pleasure of Hating (1823) Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance (1841) Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own (1928) Virginia Woolf – The Death of a Moth (1942) George Orwell – Such, Such Were the Joys (1952) Joan Didion – In Bed (1968) Amy Tan – Mother Tongue (1991) David Foster Wallace – Consider The Lobster (2005)

On 3 lists Jonathan Swift – A Modest Proposal  (1729) Virginia Woolf – Street Haunting: A London Adventure (1930) John McPhee – The Search for Marvin Gardens (1972) Joan Didion – The White Album (1968-1978) Eudora Welty – The Little Store (1978) Phillip Lopate – Against Joie de Vivre (1989)

On 2 lists Sei Shonagon – Hateful Things (from The Pillow Book ) (1002) Yoshida Kenko – Essays in Idleness (1332) Michel de Montaigne – On Some Verses of Virgil (1580) Robert Burton – Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) John Milton – Areopagitica  (1644) William Hazlitt – On Going a Journey (1822) Charles Lamb – The Superannuated Man (1823) Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience (1849) Henry David Thoreau – Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (from  Walden ) (1854) Henry David Thoreau – Economy (from  Walden ) (1854) Henry David Thoreau – Walking (1861) Robert Louis Stevenson – The Lantern-Bearers (1888) Zora Neale Hurston – How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928) George Orwell – A Hanging (1931) Junichiro Tanizaki – In Praise of Shadows (1933) Fernando Pessoa – The Book of Disquiet (1935) James Agee and Walker Evans – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) Simone Weil – On Human Personality (1943) M.F.K. Fisher – The Flaw (1943) Vladimir Nabokov – Speak, Memory (1951, revised 1966) Mary McCarthy – Artists in Uniform: A Story (1953) E.B. White – Goodbye to Forty-Eighth Street (1957) Martin Luther King, Jr. – Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) Joseph Mitchell – Joe Gould’s Secret (1964) Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation (1966) Edward Hoagland – The Courage of Turtles (1970) Annie Dillard – Seeing (from  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ) (1974) Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman (from The Woman Warrior ) (1976) Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1982) Annie Dillard – Living Like Weasels (1982) Gloria E. Anzaldúa – How to Tame a Wild Tongue (1987) Italo Calvino – Exactitude (1988) Richard Rodriguez – Late Victorians (1990) David Wojnarowicz – Being Queer in America: A Journal of Disintegration (1991) Seymour Krim – To My Brothers & Sisters in the Failure Business (1991) Anne Carson – The Anthropology of Water (1995) Susan Sontag – Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) Etel Adnan – In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005) Paul LaFarge – Destroy All Monsters (2006) Brian Doyle – Joyas Voladoras (2012)

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The Top 10 Essays Since 1950

Robert Atwan, the founder of The Best American Essays series, picks the 10 best essays of the postwar period. Links to the essays are provided when available.

Fortunately, when I worked with Joyce Carol Oates on The Best American Essays of the Century (that’s the last century, by the way), we weren’t restricted to ten selections. So to make my list of the top ten essays since 1950 less impossible, I decided to exclude all the great examples of New Journalism--Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr, and many others can be reserved for another list. I also decided to include only American writers, so such outstanding English-language essayists as Chris Arthur and Tim Robinson are missing, though they have appeared in The Best American Essays series. And I selected essays , not essayists . A list of the top ten essayists since 1950 would feature some different writers.

To my mind, the best essays are deeply personal (that doesn’t necessarily mean autobiographical) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demonstrate a mind in process--reflecting, trying-out, essaying.

James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son" (originally appeared in Harper’s , 1955)

“I had never thought of myself as an essayist,” wrote James Baldwin, who was finishing his novel Giovanni’s Room while he worked on what would become one of the great American essays. Against a violent historical background, Baldwin recalls his deeply troubled relationship with his father and explores his growing awareness of himself as a black American. Some today may question the relevance of the essay in our brave new “post-racial” world, though Baldwin considered the essay still relevant in 1984 and, had he lived to see it, the election of Barak Obama may not have changed his mind. However you view the racial politics, the prose is undeniably hypnotic, beautifully modulated and yet full of urgency. Langston Hughes nailed it when he described Baldwin’s “illuminating intensity.” The essay was collected in Notes of a Native Son courageously (at the time) published by Beacon Press in 1955.

Norman Mailer, "The White Negro" (originally appeared in Dissent , 1957)

An essay that packed an enormous wallop at the time may make some of us cringe today with its hyperbolic dialectics and hyperventilated metaphysics. But Mailer’s attempt to define the “hipster”–in what reads in part like a prose version of Ginsberg’s “Howl”–is suddenly relevant again, as new essays keep appearing with a similar definitional purpose, though no one would mistake Mailer’s hipster (“a philosophical psychopath”) for the ones we now find in Mailer’s old Brooklyn neighborhoods. Odd, how terms can bounce back into life with an entirely different set of connotations. What might Mailer call the new hipsters? Squares?

Read the essay here .

Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp'" (originally appeared in Partisan Review , 1964)

Like Mailer’s “White Negro,” Sontag’s groundbreaking essay was an ambitious attempt to define a modern sensibility, in this case “camp,” a word that was then almost exclusively associated with the gay world. I was familiar with it as an undergraduate, hearing it used often by a set of friends, department store window decorators in Manhattan. Before I heard Sontag—thirty-one, glamorous, dressed entirely in black-- read the essay on publication at a Partisan Review gathering, I had simply interpreted “campy” as an exaggerated style or over-the-top behavior. But after Sontag unpacked the concept, with the help of Oscar Wilde, I began to see the cultural world in a different light. “The whole point of camp,” she writes, “is to dethrone the serious.” Her essay, collected in Against Interpretation (1966), is not in itself an example of camp.

John McPhee, "The Search for Marvin Gardens" (originally appeared in The New Yorker , 1972)

“Go. I roll the dice—a six and a two. Through the air I move my token, the flatiron, to Vermont Avenue, where dog packs range.” And so we move, in this brilliantly conceived essay, from a series of Monopoly games to a decaying Atlantic City, the once renowned resort town that inspired America’s most popular board game. As the games progress and as properties are rapidly snapped up, McPhee juxtaposes the well-known sites on the board—Atlantic Avenue, Park Place—with actual visits to their crumbling locations. He goes to jail, not just in the game but in fact, portraying what life has now become in a city that in better days was a Boardwalk Empire. At essay’s end, he finds the elusive Marvin Gardens. The essay was collected in Pieces of the Frame (1975).

Read the essay here (subscription required).

Joan Didion, "The White Album" (originally appeared in New West , 1979)

Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Black Panthers, a recording session with Jim Morrison and the Doors, the San Francisco State riots, the Manson murders—all of these, and much more, figure prominently in Didion’s brilliant mosaic distillation (or phantasmagoric album) of California life in the late 1960s. Yet despite a cast of characters larger than most Hollywood epics, “The White Album” is a highly personal essay, right down to Didion’s report of her psychiatric tests as an outpatient in a Santa Monica hospital in the summer of 1968. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” the essay famously begins, and as it progresses nervously through cuts and flashes of reportage, with transcripts, interviews, and testimonies, we realize that all of our stories are questionable, “the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.” Portions of the essay appeared in installments in 1968-69 but it wasn’t until 1979 that Didion published the complete essay in New West magazine; it then became the lead essay of her book, The White Album (1979).

Annie Dillard, "Total Eclipse" (originally appeared in Antaeus , 1982)

In her introduction to The Best American Essays 1988 , Annie Dillard claims that “The essay can do everything a poem can do, and everything a short story can do—everything but fake it.” Her essay “Total Eclipse” easily makes her case for the imaginative power of a genre that is still undervalued as a branch of imaginative literature. “Total Eclipse” has it all—the climactic intensity of short fiction, the interwoven imagery of poetry, and the meditative dynamics of the personal essay: “This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds.” The essay, which first appeared in Antaeus in 1982 was collected in Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), a slim volume that ranks among the best essay collections of the past fifty years.

Phillip Lopate, "Against Joie de Vivre" (originally appeared in Ploughshares , 1986)

This is an essay that made me glad I’d started The Best American Essays the year before. I’d been looking for essays that grew out of a vibrant Montaignean spirit—personal essays that were witty, conversational, reflective, confessional, and yet always about something worth discussing. And here was exactly what I’d been looking for. I might have found such writing several decades earlier but in the 80s it was relatively rare; Lopate had found a creative way to insert the old familiar essay into the contemporary world: “Over the years,” Lopate begins, “I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre , the knack of knowing how to live.” He goes on to dissect in comic yet astute detail the rituals of the modern dinner party. The essay was selected by Gay Talese for The Best American Essays 1987 and collected in Against Joie de Vivre in 1989 .

Edward Hoagland, "Heaven and Nature" (originally appeared in Harper’s, 1988)

“The best essayist of my generation,” is how John Updike described Edward Hoagland, who must be one of the most prolific essayists of our time as well. “Essays,” Hoagland wrote, “are how we speak to one another in print—caroming thoughts not merely in order to convey a certain packet of information, but with a special edge or bounce of personal character in a kind of public letter.” I could easily have selected many other Hoagland essays for this list (such as “The Courage of Turtles”), but I’m especially fond of “Heaven and Nature,” which shows Hoagland at his best, balancing the public and private, the well-crafted general observation with the clinching vivid example. The essay, selected by Geoffrey Wolff for The Best American Essays 1989 and collected in Heart’s Desire (1988), is an unforgettable meditation not so much on suicide as on how we remarkably manage to stay alive.

Jo Ann Beard, "The Fourth State of Matter" (originally appeared in The New Yorker , 1996)

A question for nonfiction writing students: When writing a true story based on actual events, how does the narrator create dramatic tension when most readers can be expected to know what happens in the end? To see how skillfully this can be done turn to Jo Ann Beard’s astonishing personal story about a graduate student’s murderous rampage on the University of Iowa campus in 1991. “Plasma is the fourth state of matter,” writes Beard, who worked in the U of I’s physics department at the time of the incident, “You’ve got your solid, your liquid, your gas, and there’s your plasma. In outer space there’s the plasmasphere and the plasmapause.” Besides plasma, in this emotion-packed essay you will find entangled in all the tension a lovable, dying collie, invasive squirrels, an estranged husband, the seriously disturbed gunman, and his victims, one of them among the author’s dearest friends. Selected by Ian Frazier for The Best American Essays 1997 , the essay was collected in Beard’s award-winning volume, The Boys of My Youth (1998).

David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" (originally appeared in Gourmet , 2004)

They may at first look like magazine articles—those factually-driven, expansive pieces on the Illinois State Fair, a luxury cruise ship, the adult video awards, or John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign—but once you uncover the disguise and get inside them you are in the midst of essayistic genius. One of David Foster Wallace’s shortest and most essayistic is his “coverage” of the annual Maine Lobster Festival, “Consider the Lobster.” The Festival becomes much more than an occasion to observe “the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker” in action as Wallace poses an uncomfortable question to readers of the upscale food magazine: “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” Don’t gloss over the footnotes. Susan Orlean selected the essay for The Best American Essays 2004 and Wallace collected it in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (2005).

Read the essay here . (Note: the electronic version from Gourmet magazine’s archives differs from the essay that appears in The Best American Essays and in his book, Consider the Lobster. )

I wish I could include twenty more essays but these ten in themselves comprise a wonderful and wide-ranging mini-anthology, one that showcases some of the most outstanding literary voices of our time. Readers who’d like to see more of the best essays since 1950 should take a look at The Best American Essays of the Century (2000).

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25 Great Nonfiction Essays You Can Read Online for Free

Alison Doherty

Alison Doherty is a writing teacher and part time assistant professor living in Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA from The New School in writing for children and teenagers. She loves writing about books on the Internet, listening to audiobooks on the subway, and reading anything with a twisty plot or a happily ever after.

View All posts by Alison Doherty

I love reading books of nonfiction essays and memoirs , but sometimes have a hard time committing to a whole book. This is especially true if I don’t know the author. But reading nonfiction essays online is a quick way to learn which authors you like. Also, reading nonfiction essays can help you learn more about different topics and experiences.

Besides essays on Book Riot,  I love looking for essays on The New Yorker , The Atlantic , The Rumpus , and Electric Literature . But there are great nonfiction essays available for free all over the Internet. From contemporary to classic writers and personal essays to researched ones—here are 25 of my favorite nonfiction essays you can read today.

“Beware of Feminist Lite” by  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The author of We Should All Be Feminists  writes a short essay explaining the danger of believing men and woman are equal only under certain conditions.

“It’s Silly to Be Frightened of Being Dead” by Diana Athill

A 96-year-old woman discusses her shifting attitude towards death from her childhood in the 1920s when death was a taboo subject, to World War 2 until the present day.

“Letter from a Region in my Mind” by James Baldwin

There are many moving and important essays by James Baldwin . This one uses the lens of religion to explore the Black American experience and sexuality. Baldwin describes his move from being a teenage preacher to not believing in god. Then he recounts his meeting with the prominent Nation of Islam member Elijah Muhammad.

“Relations” by Eula Biss

Biss uses the story of a white woman giving birth to a Black baby that was mistakenly implanted during a fertility treatment to explore racial identities and segregation in society as a whole and in her own interracial family.

“Friday Night Lights” by Buzz Bissinger

A comprehensive deep dive into the world of high school football in a small West Texas town.

“The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Coates examines the lingering and continuing affects of slavery on  American society and makes a compelling case for the descendants of slaves being offered reparations from the government.

“Why I Write” by Joan Didion

This is one of the most iconic nonfiction essays about writing. Didion describes the reasons she became a writer, her process, and her journey to doing what she loves professionally.

“Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Roger Ebert

With knowledge of his own death, the famous film critic ponders questions of mortality while also giving readers a pep talk for how to embrace life fully.

“My Mother’s Tongue” by Zavi Kang Engles

In this personal essay, Engles celebrates the close relationship she had with her mother and laments losing her Korean fluency.

“My Life as an Heiress” by Nora Ephron

As she’s writing an important script, Ephron imagines her life as a newly wealthy woman when she finds out an uncle left her an inheritance. But she doesn’t know exactly what that inheritance is.

“My FatheR Spent 30 Years in Prison. Now He’s Out.” by Ashley C. Ford

Ford describes the experience of getting to know her father after he’s been in prison for almost all of her life. Bridging the distance in their knowledge of technology becomes a significant—and at times humorous—step in rebuilding their relationship.

“Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay

There’s a reason Gay named her bestselling essay collection after this story. It’s a witty, sharp, and relatable look at what it means to call yourself a feminist.

“The Empathy Exams” by Leslie Jamison

Jamison discusses her job as a medical actor helping to train medical students to improve their empathy and uses this frame to tell the story of one winter in college when she had an abortion and heart surgery.

“What I Learned from a Fitting Room Disaster About Clothes and Life” by Scaachi Koul

One woman describes her history with difficult fitting room experiences culminating in one catastrophe that will change the way she hopes to identify herself through clothes.

“Breasts: the Odd Couple” by Una LaMarche

LaMarche examines her changing feelings about her own differently sized breasts.

“How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story” by Donna Minkowitz

A journalist looks back at her own biased reporting on a news story about the sexual assault and murder of a trans man in 1993. Minkowitz examines how ideas of gender and sexuality have changed since she reported the story, along with how her own lesbian identity influenced her opinions about the crime.

“Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell

In this famous essay, Orwell bemoans how politics have corrupted the English language by making it more vague, confusing, and boring.

“Letting Go” by David Sedaris

The famously funny personal essay author , writes about a distinctly unfunny topic of tobacco addiction and his own journey as a smoker. It is (predictably) hilarious.

“Joy” by Zadie Smith

Smith explores the difference between pleasure and joy by closely examining moments of both, including eating a delicious egg sandwich, taking drugs at a concert, and falling in love.

“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan

Tan tells the story of how her mother’s way of speaking English as an immigrant from China changed the way people viewed her intelligence.

“Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace

The prolific nonfiction essay and fiction writer  travels to the Maine Lobster Festival to write a piece for Gourmet Magazine. With his signature footnotes, Wallace turns this experience into a deep exploration on what constitutes consciousness.

“I Am Not Pocahontas” by Elissa Washuta

Washuta looks at her own contemporary Native American identity through the lens of stereotypical depictions from 1990s films.

“Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White

E.B. White didn’t just write books like Charlotte’s Web and The Elements of Style . He also was a brilliant essayist. This nature essay explores the theme of fatherhood against the backdrop of a lake within the forests of Maine.

“Pell-Mell” by Tom Wolfe

The inventor of “new journalism” writes about the creation of an American idea by telling the story of Thomas Jefferson snubbing a European Ambassador.

“The Death of the Moth” by Virginia Woolf

In this nonfiction essay, Wolf describes a moth dying on her window pane. She uses the story as a way to ruminate on the lager theme of the meaning of life and death.

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52 Argumentative Essay Ideas that are Actually Interesting

What’s covered:, how to pick a good argumentative essay topic, elements of a strong argumentative essay, argumentative essay idea example topics.

Are you having writer’s block? Coming up with an essay topic can be the hardest part of the process. You have very likely encountered argumentative essay writing in high school and have been asked to write your own. If you’re having trouble finding a topic, we’ve created a list of 52 essay ideas to help jumpstart your brainstorming process! In addition, this post will cover strategies for picking a topic and how to make your argument a strong one. Ultimately, the goal is to convince your reader. 

An argumentative essay tasks the writer with presenting an assertion and bolstering that assertion with proper research. You’ll present the claim’s authenticity. This means that whatever argument you’re making must be empirically true! Writing an argumentative essay without any evidence will leave you stranded without any facts to back up your claim. When choosing your essay topic, begin by thinking about themes that have been researched before. Readers will be more engaged with an argument that is supported by data.

This isn’t to say that your argumentative essay topic has to be as well-known, like “Gravity: Does it Exist?” but it shouldn’t be so obscure that there isn’t ample evidence. Finding a topic with multiple sources confirming its validity will help you support your thesis throughout your essay. If upon review of these articles you begin to doubt their worth due to small sample sizes, biased funding sources, or scientific disintegrity, don’t be afraid to move on to a different topic. Your ultimate goal should be proving to your audience that your argument is true because the data supports it.

The hardest essays to write are the ones that you don’t care about. If you don’t care about your topic, why should someone else? Topics that are more personal to the reader are immediately more thoughtful and meaningful because the author’s passion shines through. If you are free to choose an argumentative essay topic, find a topic where the papers you read and cite are fun to read. It’s much easier to write when the passion is already inside of you!

However, you won’t always have the choice to pick your topic. You may receive an assignment to write an argumentative essay that you feel is boring. There is still value in writing an argumentative essay on a topic that may not be of interest to you. It will push you to study a new topic, and broaden your ability to write on a variety of topics. Getting good at proving a point thoroughly and effectively will help you to both understand different fields more completely and increase your comfort with scientific writing.

Convincing Thesis Statement

It’s important to remember the general essay structure: an introduction paragraph with a thesis statement, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. A strong thesis statement will set your essay up for success. What is it? A succinct, concise, and pithy sentence found in your first paragraph that summarizes your main point. Pour over this statement to ensure that you can set up your reader to understand your essay. You should also restate your thesis throughout your essay to keep your reader focused on your point.

Ample Research

A typical argumentative essay prompt may look like this: “What has been the most important invention of the 21st century? Support your claim with evidence.” This question is open-ended and gives you flexibility. But that also means it requires research to prove your point convincingly. The strongest essays weave scientific quotes and results into your writing. You can use recent articles, primary sources, or news sources. Maybe you even cite your own research. Remember, this process takes time, so be sure you set aside enough time to dive deep into your topic.

Clear Structure

If the reader can’t follow your argument, all your research could be for nothing! Structure is key to persuading your audience. Below are two common argumentative essay structures that you can use to organize your essays.

The Toulmin argument and the Rogerian argument each contain the four sections mentioned above but executes them in different ways. Be sure to familiarize yourself with both essay structures so that your essay is the most effective it can be.

The Toulmin argument has a straightforward presentation. You begin with your assertion, your thesis statement. You then list the evidence that supports your point and why these are valid sources. The bulk of your essay should be explaining how your sources support your claim. You then end your essay by acknowledging and discussing the problems or flaws that readers may find in your presentation. Then, you should list the solutions to these and alternative perspectives and prove your argument is stronger.

The Rogerian argument has a more complex structure. You begin with a discussion of what opposing sides do right and the validity of their arguments. This is effective because it allows you to piece apart your opponent’s argument. The next section contains your position on the questions. In this section, it is important to list problems with your opponent’s argument that your argument fixes. This way, your position feels much stronger. Your essay ends with suggesting a possible compromise between the two sides. A combination of the two sides could be the most effective solution.

• Is the death penalty effective?
• Is our election process fair?
• Is the electoral college outdated?
• Should we have lower taxes?
• How many Supreme Court Justices should there be?
• Should there be different term limits for elected officials?
• Should the drinking age be lowered?
• Does religion cause war?
• Should the country legalize marijuana?
• Should the country have tighter gun control laws?
• Should men get paternity leave?
• Should maternity leave be longer?
• Should smoking be banned?
• Should the government have a say in our diet?
• Should birth control be free?
• Should we increase access to condoms for teens?
• Should abortion be legal?
• Do school uniforms help educational attainment?
• Are kids better or worse students than they were ten years ago?
• Should students be allowed to cheat?
• Is school too long?
• Does school start too early?
• Are there benefits to attending a single-sex school?
• Is summer break still relevant?
• Is college too expensive?

Art / Culture

• How can you reform copyright law?
• What was the best decade for music?
• Do video games cause students to be more violent?
• Should content online be more harshly regulated?
• Should graffiti be considered art or vandalism?
• Should schools ban books?
• How important is art education?
• Should music be taught in school?
• Are music-sharing services helpful to artists?
• What is the best way to teach science in a religious school?
• Should fracking be legal?
• Should parents be allowed to modify their unborn children?
• Should vaccinations be required for attending school?
• Are GMOs helpful or harmful?
• Are we too dependent on our phones?
• Should everyone have internet access?
• Should internet access be free?
• Should the police force be required to wear body cams?
• Should social media companies be allowed to collect data from their users?
• How has the internet impacted human society?
• Should self-driving cars be allowed on the streets?
• Should athletes be held to high moral standards?
• Are professional athletes paid too much?
• Should the U.S. have more professional sports teams?
• Should sports be separated by gender?
• Should college athletes be paid?
• What are the best ways to increase safety in sports?

Where to Get More Argumentative Essay Topic Ideas

If you need more help brainstorming topics, especially those that are personalized to your interests, you can use CollegeVine’s free AI tutor, Ivy . Ivy can help you come up with original argumentative essay ideas, and she can also help with the rest of your homework, from math to languages.

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• How to Write Dazzlingly Brilliant Essays: Sharp Advice for Ambitious Students

Rachel McCombie, a graduate of St John’s College, Oxford, shares actionable tips on taking your essays from “Good” to “Outstanding.”

For ambitious students, essays are a chance to showcase academic flair, demonstrate original thinking and impress with advanced written English skills.

The best students relish the challenge of writing essays because they’re a chance to exercise academic research skills and construct interesting arguments. Essays allow you to demonstrate your knowledge, understanding and intelligence in a creative and relatively unrestricted way – provided you keep within the word count! But when lots of other people are answering the same essay question as you, how do you make yours stand out from the crowd? In this article, we’re going to show you the secret of writing a truly brilliant essay.

What are essays actually for?

Before we get into the nitty gritty of how to write an outstanding essay, we need to go right back to basics and think about what essays are actually designed to test. Only by understanding the purpose of an essay can you really begin to understand what it is that tutors are looking for when they read your work. No matter what the academic level of the student is, essays are designed to test many things: – Knowledge – fundamentally, essays test and help consolidate what you’ve read and learned, making them an important part of the learning process, particularly for humanities subjects. –  Comprehension – they test your ability to make sense of and clearly explain complex concepts and issues. – They test your ability to understand the question and produce a considered response to it. – They evaluate your ability to absorb and condense information from a variety of sources , which will probably mean covering a lot of material in a short space of time; this necessitates appraisal of which bits of material are relevant and which are not. – They test your ability to write a balanced and coherent argument that considers a number of points of view. – They showcase your level of written English skills. – They even put your time management to the test – essays are a part of your workload that must be planned, prioritised and delivered to a high standard, to deadline.

Characteristics of the perfect essay

Now that we know why we’re asked to write essays, what are the characteristics that define the essays that impress? The tutors marking your essays may have their own preferences and things they look for in outstanding essays, but let’s take a look at a few of the irrefutable traits of the best.

Original thinking

The hallmark of the truly brilliant essay is original thinking. That doesn’t have to mean coming up with an entirely new theory; most of, if not all, the topics you’ll be studying at GCSE , A-level or even undergraduate level have been thought about in so much depth and by so many people that virtually every possible angle will have been thought of already. But what it does mean is that the essay stands out from those of other students in that it goes beyond the obvious and takes an original approach – perhaps approaching the topic from a different angle, coming up with a different hypothesis from what you’ve been discussing in class, or introducing new evidence and intelligent insights from material not included on the reading list.

Solid, in-depth knowledge and understanding

It goes without saying that the brilliant essay should demonstrate a strong knowledge of the facts, and not just knowledge but sound comprehension of the concepts or issues being discussed and why they matter. The perfect essay demonstrates an ability to deploy relevant facts and use them to form the basis of an argument or hypothesis. It covers a wide range of material and considers every point of view, confidently making use of and quoting from a variety of sources.

Clear structure with intelligent debate

The perfect essay provides a coherent discussion of both sides of the story, developing a balanced argument throughout, and with a conclusion that weighs up the evidence you’ve covered and perhaps provides your own intelligent opinion on how the topic should be interpreted based on the evidence covered.

No superfluous information

Everything written in the perfect essay serves a purpose – to inform and persuade. There’s no rambling or going off at tangents – it sticks to the point and doesn’t waste the reader’s time. This goes back to our earlier point about sorting the relevant facts from the irrelevant material; including material that isn’t relevant shows that you’ve not quite grasped the real heart of the matter.

Exceptional English

The words in the perfect essay flow effortlessly, and the reader feels in safe hands. Sentences need never be read more than once to be understood, and each follows logically on from the next, with no random jumping about from topic to topic from one paragraph to the next. Spelling and grammar are flawless, with no careless typos. So how do you go about writing this mythical Perfect Essay? Read on to find out!

Put in extra background work

Committed students always read beyond what the reading list tells them to read. Guaranteed to impress, wide reading gives you deeper knowledge than your peers and gives you the extra knowledge and insights you need to make your essay stand out. If you’re studying English, for example, don’t just read the set text! Here are some ideas to widen your reading and give you a good range of impressive quotes to include in your essay: – Other works by the same author – how do they compare with your set text? – Works by contemporary authors – does your set text fit into a wider movement, or is it very different from what was being written at the time? – Works by the author’s predecessors – what works inspired the author of your set text? How do you see them shining through in the text you’re studying, and how have they been developed? – Literary criticism – gauge the range of opinions about your set text by reading what the literary critics have to say. Whose opinion do you most agree with, and why? – Background history – so that you can appreciate and refer to the context in which the author was writing (we’ll come back to this last point a little later). It sounds like a lot of extra work, but you don’t necessarily have to read everything in full. It’s fine to dip into these other resources providing you don’t inadvertently take points out of context.

Know what you want to say before you start writing

You’re probably sick of hearing this particular piece of advice, but it’s important to start out with a clear idea in your mind of what you want to say in your essay and how you will structure your arguments. The easiest way to do this is to write an essay plan. This needn’t be a big deal, or time-consuming; all you need to do is to open a new document on your computer, type out the ideas you want to cover and drag and drop them into a logical order. From there, you simply start typing your essay directly into the plan itself. Your essay should include an introduction, a series of paragraphs that develop an argument rather than just jumping from topic to topic, and a conclusion that weighs up the evidence.

Answer the question you’ve been set, not the question you want to answer

A common problem with students’ responses to essays is that rather than answering the question they’ve been set , they try to mould the question to what they’d prefer to write about, because that’s what they feel most comfortable with. Be very careful not to do this! You could end up writing a brilliant essay, but if didn’t actually answer the question then it’s not going to be well received by the person marking it.

Give a balanced argument…

Good essays give both sides of an argument, presenting information impartially and considering multiple points of view. One-sided arguments won’t impress, as you need to show that you’ve thought about the evidence comprehensively.

…but your opinion and interpretation matter too

Show that you’ve made your own mind up based on your weighing up of the evidence. This shows that you’re not just hiding behind what other people say about the topic, but that you’ve had the independence of mind to form your own intelligent opinion about it.

Quote liberally

Use quotations from academic works and sources to back up points you want to make. Doing so strengthens your argument by providing evidence for your statements, as well as demonstrating that you’ve read widely around your subject. However, don’t go too far and write an essay that’s essentially just a list of what other people say about the subject. Quoting too much suggests that you don’t have the confidence or knowledge to explain things in your own words, so have to hide behind those of other people. Make your own mind up about what you’re writing about – as already mentioned, it’s fine to state your own opinion if you’ve considered the arguments and presented the evidence.

Context matters

As we’ve already touched on, if you can demonstrate knowledge of the context of the subject you’re writing about, this will show that you’ve considered possible historical influences that may have shaped a work or issue. This shows that you haven’t simply taken the essay question at face value and demonstrates your ability to think beyond the obvious. An ability to look at the wider picture marks you out as an exceptional student, as many people can’t see the wood for the trees and have a very narrow focus when it comes to writing essays. If you’re an English student, for instance, an author’s work should be considered not in isolation but in the context of the historical events and thinking that helped define the period in which the author was writing. You can’t write about Blake’s poetry without some knowledge and discussion of background events such as the Industrial Revolution, and the development of the Romantic movement as a whole.

Include images and diagrams

You know what they say – a picture speaks a thousand words. What matters in an essay is effective and persuasive communication, and if a picture or diagram will help support a point you’re making, include it. As well as helping to communicate, visuals also make your essay more enjoyable to read for the person marking it – and if they enjoy reading it, the chances are you’ll get better marks! Don’t forget to ensure that you include credits for any images and diagrams you include.

Use full academic citations and a bibliography

Show you mean business by including a full set of academic citations, with a bibliography at the end, even if you haven’t been told to. The great thing about this is that it not only makes you look organised and scholarly, but it also gives you the opportunity to show off just how many extra texts you’ve studied to produce your masterpiece of an essay! Make use of the footnote feature in your word processor and include citations at the bottom of each page, with a main bibliography at the end of the essay. There are different accepted forms for citing an academic reference, but the main thing to remember is to pick one format and be consistent. Typically the citation will include the title and author of the work, the date of publication and the page number(s) of the point or quotation you’re referring to. Here’s an example: 1. Curta, F. (2007) – “Some remarks on ethnicity in medieval archaeology” in Early Medieval Europe 15 (2), pp. 159-185

Before you ask, no, a spell check isn’t good enough! How many times have you typed “form” instead of “from”? That’s just one of a huge number of errors that spell check would simply miss. Your English should be impeccable if you want to be taken seriously, and that means clear and intelligent sentence structures, no misplaced apostrophes, no typos and no grammar crimes. Include your name at the top of each page of your essay, and number the pages. Also, make sure you use a font that’s easy to read, such as Times New Roman or Arial. The person marking your essay won’t appreciate having to struggle through reading a fancy Gothic font, even if it does happen to match the Gothic literature you’re studying!

Meet the deadline

You don’t need us to tell you that, but for the sake of being comprehensive, we’re including it anyway. You could write the best essay ever, but if you deliver it late, it won’t be looked upon favourably! Don’t leave writing your essay until the last minute – start writing with plenty of time to spare, and ideally leave time to sleep on it before you submit it. Allowing time for it to sink in may result in you having a sudden brilliant revelation that you want to include. So there we have it – everything you need to know in order to write an essay to impress. If you want to get ahead, you might also want to think about attending an English summer school .

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Essay Writing Guide

Essay Topics

Last updated on: Dec 19, 2023

Essay Topics: 100+ Best Essay Topics for your Guidance

By: Nova A.

13 min read

Reviewed By: Rylee W.

Published on: Jan 29, 2019

Let’s face it, essay writing can be tedious and boring. Spending hours to write a good essay is difficult, and brainstorming essay topic ideas can be even more confusing.

This is what makes writing essays difficult and time-consuming. Luckily, you can learn  essay writing  with practice and by following some good examples. But before that, you should know how to choose a good and engaging topic for your essay.

To help you get started, we have categorized a list of a number of different types of essay topic lists.

On this Page

Argumentative Essay Topics

An argumentative essay investigates a topic in great detail, forms an argument over it, and defends it using supporting data.

Below are some good argumentative essay topic ideas to help you draft winning essays.

• School students should be allowed to curate their high school curriculum.
• The role of physical education in the school system.
• Should the death sentence be implemented globally?
• It should be illegal to use certain types of animals for experiments and other research purposes.
• Should the government do more to improve accessibility for people with physical disabilities?
• Do people learn the art of becoming a politician, or are they born with it?
• Social media platform owners should monitor and block comments containing hateful language.
• Does technology play a role in making people feel more isolated?
• Will there ever be a time when there will be no further technological advancements?
• It should be illegal to produce and sell tobacco.
• Girls should be motivated to take part in sports.
• Rape victims should abort their unborn children.
• Fathers should get equal paternity leave.
• Do teenagers get into trouble because they are bored?
• Individuals who have failed at parenting should be punished.
• Vaping is less harmful than smoking cigarettes.
• Covid-19 vaccination has more cons than pros.
• Social media is the real cause of teenage depression.
• Is the American education system perfect for society?
• Recycling should be made compulsory.

Choosing a strong topic is key to writing a great essay. Have a look at our blog to select good  argumentative essay topics  to impress the audience.

Persuasive Essay Topics

A persuasive essay is similar to an argumentative paper. However, in it, the writer wants to convince the readers of their point of view. Simple essay topics would make better essays as they help the students stay focused.

Below is a list of some good persuasive essay topics for you:

• Energy drinks should be banned in schools and colleges.
• Gambling should be banned in the United States.
• Should abortions be banned worldwide?
• Hunting is an immoral act.
• Is it okay to use animals in a circus?
• Harmful dogs should be euthanized.
• Cell phones should not be allowed in schools.
• Teachers should pass a professional exam, just like students.
• Schools should reduce the workload on students.
• Sex education should be mandatory in high schools.
• Vlogging isn’t an actual profession.
• Is LinkedIn helpful for finding a job?
• Social media has played a big role in increasing business opportunities.
• Is Java becoming obsolete?
• Should employers go through the candidate’s social media profiles?
• Animal testing should be banned.
• Violent video games should be banned.
• Parents with mental disabilities should not be allowed to adopt children.
• Alcohol consumption should be legalized in Muslim countries.
• Every person should get Covid-19 vaccination.

For your help, we have gathered a wide range of  persuasive essay topics . Give it a read.

Descriptive Essay Topics

A descriptive essay describes a specific thing by using sensory data. It is done to engage the reader’s five senses (taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight).

The following is a list of descriptive essay topic ideas for the students.

• The person who is responsible for making a difference in my life.
• Describe a smartphone and its benefits to someone from the ‘60s.
• The most interesting piece of art I have ever seen.
• Describe the experience of falling in love.
• What does a place that only exists in your imagination look like?
• Describe meeting a famous person.
• Describe yourself and your personality to a stranger.
• What will life be like in 2050?
• An experience that changed my life forever.
• Your idea of the perfect day.
• My first trip abroad.
• The most significant event in American History.
• A popular book series that disappointed you.
• A look into my daily life.
• A day in the life of an ER doctor.
• A trip to the museum.
• The most interesting movie I watched during my summer vacation.
• My favorite childhood memory.
• An incident that changed my life.
• An incident that restored my faith in humanity.

Here are some more  descriptive essay topics  to help you find a good idea for your essay.

Discover Captivating Topics in a Click!

Narrative Essay Topics

In a narrative essay, your goal is to share a personal experience by telling a story. This creative form of writing depends on how strong and exciting the theme is. The article topics for students given here are carefully curated and would help the students do good in their essays.

Some examples and topics of narrative topic ideas are presented below.

• The experience that taught me how looks could be deceiving.
• A week without internet and technology.
• The impact your first love had on your life.
• How much did your teachers contribute to making you the person you are today?
• An experience that made you realize your parents were or weren’t always right.
• A moment when someone you didn’t like surprised you with kindness.
• The influence technology has had on your hobbies and life.
• An achievement outside of academic life?
• Which school lesson had the biggest influence on your life?
• A day when you fought procrastination.
• The time you faced rejection.
• The time when you stood against your parents.
• An experience that left you helpless.
• The time you prayed to be an only child.
• An act of kindness you can never forget.
• Death of a loved one.
• Your biggest pet peeve.
• Your definition of a perfect weekend.
• The things you regret most in life.
• Your first experience of an air trip.

Choosing interesting  narrative essay topics  is essential to make the content compelling for the readers.

Research Essay Topics

While writing a research essay, the most crucial step is choosing a topic for your essay. Select a topic that is broad enough to compose an entire research essay on it.

Below are some of the best topics for your research essay.

• Effects of violent cartoons on children.
• Should universities provide accommodations to disabled students?
• Events and experiences I agree are causing the increase in terrorism.
• How do technology and gadgets affect the studies of children?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school?
• Universities are becoming business-driven.
• Does college debt affect the future lives of students?
• Why has the divorce rate changed in the past decade?
• Schools should allow the use of smartphones in school.
• Effective ways to decrease depression among our youth.
• Analyze the relationship between the United States of America and North Korea.
• Why did the UK decide to leave the EU?
• Is it true that students learn better in a same-sex school?
• How does giving kids different gadgets affect their studies?
• Compare the immigration policies of two different countries.
• Events that lead to World War I.
• Pros and cons of studying abroad.
• How has Covid-19 influenced the education system of the world?
• Individual acts that lead to Global Warming.
• Effectiveness of the policies made to control Covid-19.

Looking for more? We have an extensive range of  research essay topics  to make the audience fall in love with your work.

Expository Essay Topics

While writing an expository essay, you have to explain and clarify your topic clearly to the readers.

Below is a list of expository essay topics:

• Why do teenagers commit suicide?
• What is the impact of music on our youth?
• What are the consequences of skipping school?
• Why do teenagers use drugs?
• How can pets make you happy and improve your life?
• Consequences of having alcoholic drinks within a school campus.
• How does drug use affect relationships?
• Is global warming a cause of skin cancer?
• Is sodium bad for your health?
• What is the line between being overweight and being obese?
• Why do you want to pursue your desired career?
• Explain how advancements in science improve the quality of life for humans.
• What are some unconventional ways of relieving stress?
• If you could swap your lives with someone, who would it be and why?
• What are some major stress factors in a teenager’s life?
• Why is getting a degree important for job life?
• Pros and cons of getting financial aid.
• How emotional support animals help in treating mental conditions.
• How does prostitution influence society?
• The environmental causes of smoking.

5StarEssays.com has gathered an additional and extensive list of  expository essay topics .

Tough Essay Due? Hire Tough Writers!

Compare and Contrast Essay Topics

In a compare and contrast essay, you evaluate and analyze the similarities and differences between the two subjects. Your reader must be able to form an opinion after weighing the pros and cons you have set forth.

Below are some topics for you to choose for your compare and contrast paper:

• Extroverts and introverts.
• Generation Y Vs. Generation Z.
• Traditional Helicopters Vs. Lifesize Drones.
• Unemployed students Vs. students with a part-time job.
• SAT and TOEFL.
• Persuasive and argumentative essays - How are they similar?
• How were the causes of World War I different from the causes of World War II?
• Education vs. professional career: what is more difficult?
• Real-life or spending your time daydreaming.
• Consequences of earthquake and tsunami: what’s worse?
• Being popular in high school or alone?
• Part-time work or studying for a higher degree?
• Getting married at an old age or a young age?
• Fashion today Vs. twenty years ago.
• Donald Trump Vs. Hillary Clinton.
• Democracy Vs. Dictatorship
• Vietnam War Vs. War on Terror.
• Benefits of drinking tea Vs. coffee.
• Greek and Roman methodologies - Similarities and differences.
• Traditional Vs. distant learning.

Get more interesting  compare and contrast essay topics  at 5StarEssays.com to impress your instructors.

Cause and Effect Essay Topics

The cause and effect essay explains why something happens and what happens as a result of those happenings. A cause and effect essay is a type of expository essay.

Here are a few topics for your cause and effect essay:

• What are the causes of eating disorders?
• Effects of climate change and global warming.
• The effects of the Feminism movement.
• What are the causes of increasing depression among teenagers?
• What are the causes of suicidal thoughts?
• Is keeping a pet effective in calming your mind?
• How does divorce affects children?
• Why are men afraid of commitment?
• Effects of social media on youth.
• Has social media affected relationships among families?
• Discuss the effects of homeschooling on children.
• Causes of heart diseases.
• Causes of sibling rivalry.
• Cramming doesn't help improve test scores.
• Cause and effect of depression in the workplace.
• How do abusive parents influence the mental stability of a child?
• Causes and effects of bullying.
• Causes of obesity in teenagers.
• Effects of taking a balanced diet on health?
• Causes and effects of insomnia.

To get more ideas, visit our  cause and effect essay topics  that are remarkable and well-suited for a great essay.

Controversial Argumentative Essay Topics

Argumentative essay topics are quite popular assignments in universities. If you are a student searching for a captivating argumentative essay topic, here is a list of ideas you can consider.

• Third world war should be prevented by the Russian and US governments.
• Political policies and practices affecting students.
• Is gun control effective in reducing crime?
• Same-sex marriage and constitutional law.
• Is society over-regulated?
• Are leaders born or made?
• No one should be above the law.
• Monarchy: pros and cons.
• Rules on Political Activities by Federal Employees.
• The most corrupt countries in the world.
• Mercy killing should be legalized in all countries of the world.
• Death penalties should be abolished.
• Third-world countries should be provided with education plans by the developed countries.
• Muslims should not be labeled as terrorists.
• Illegal immigrants should be given equal rights.
• Abortions should be legalized.
• Live-in relationships should be encouraged.
• Professional athletes should be allowed to consume steroids.
• Should physical punishments be given to children?
• Smoking in public should be an offensive crime.

Funny Argumentative Essay Topics

Are you looking for some funny argumentative essay topics for your essay? If so, choose a topic from the following list.

• Why do people like watching funny videos?
• What your cat is really thinking.
• Why spam emails should be your favorite type of email.
• Why wearing braces is fun.
• School dropouts are the best in our society.
• Why I don't like country music.
• Types of dates.
• A better way to get things done.
• What organic food really is.
• Things guys do that girls hate.
• How to annoy your friend.
• Why do women pretend that they enjoy sports?
• Things preventing you from completing your homework in time.
• Funny things we see in wedding ceremonies.
• Why are spam emails more interesting?
• Why does Starbucks coffee taste better?
• Why are backbenchers smarter than other students?
• Clowns are scarier than funny.
• Should we be maintaining social distancing even after Covid-19?
• Why is watching movies better than reading books?

Informative Essay Topics for Students

Essay writing requires depth. However, you don’t have to choose a complex topic in middle school, high school, or college.

Here is a list of interesting essay topics for middle school, high school, and college students.

Essay Topics for College Students

• Virtual classes cannot replace the traditional class system.
• Advantages and disadvantages of online classes.
• Is there a need to reform the college education system?
• Assault weapons should not be legal.
• People with a history of mental illness should not be allowed to purchase firearms.
• The taxation system needs to be changed around the globe.
• Kids should not be the target audience in advertising.
• The number of calories should be mentioned with every meal.
• Feminists have effectively improved the workforce for women.
• Is the death penalty effective?
• How to identify fake news?
• How to maintain a healthy life?
• How to treat PTSD naturally?
• Should people be judged on their appearance?
• How is technology influencing the work performance of people?
• Private Vs. public schools
• How to choose majors in high school?
• Impact of legalizing drugs on society.
• Significance of learning social values.
• How to prevent bullying on campus?

Essay Topics for High School

• The choice to join the armed forces should be an individual decision.
• Listening to music can increase work efficiency.
• Being honest has more cons than pros.
• People who have been in an accident value life more than others.
• Embarrassing moments help boost your confidence.
• Kindness is the most valuable personal trait.
• Spontaneity can improve your life.
• Can hobbies help improve the richness of one’s life?
• Dressing properly in the office improves work efficiency
• Being organized can help in school as well as the office.
• Impact of homosexuality on society.
• What is feminism?
• How to overcome fears and phobias?
• Significance of having leadership skills in job life?
• Causes and treatments for bipolar disorder.
• Side effects of consuming antidepressants.
• How important is mental health in succeeding professionally?
• How do teaching methods influence learning abilities?
• Should specially-abled people be allowed to work in offices?
• Discrimination and racism in the US.

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Essay Topics for Middle School

• Every child should have chores at home.
• There should not be any summer classes.
• Should students continue studying during summer vacation?
• Parents should pay attention to the amount of time their children spend watching television.
• Favorite family summer vacation.
• Sports should be mandatory in every school.
• Processed foods should not be part of private and public school lunch.
• Do students still use newspapers for research?
• Every individual should spend a year doing community service.
• The weekend should be 3 days long.

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160 Good Argumentative Essay Topics for Students in 2024

April 3, 2024

The skill of writing an excellent argumentative essay is a crucial one for every high school or college student to master. In sum, argumentative essays teach students how to organize their thoughts logically and present them in a convincing way. This skill is helpful not only for those pursuing degrees in law , international relations , or public policy , but for any student who wishes to develop their critical thinking faculties. In this article, we’ll cover what makes a good argument essay and offer several argumentative essay topics for high school and college students. Let’s begin!

What is an Argumentative Essay?

An argumentative essay is an essay that uses research to present a reasoned argument on a particular subject . As with the persuasive essay , the purpose of an argumentative essay is to sway the reader to the writer’s position. However, a strong persuasive essay makes its point through diligent research and emotion while a strong argumentative essay should be based solely on facts, not feelings.

Moreover, each fact should be supported by clear evidence from credible sources . Furthermore, a good argumentative essay will have an easy-to-follow structure. When organizing your argumentative essay, use this format as a guide:

• Introduction
• Supporting body paragraphs
• Paragraph(s) addressing common counterarguments

Argumentative Essay Format

In the introduction , the writer presents their position and thesis statement —a sentence that summarizes the paper’s main points. The body paragraphs then draw upon supporting evidence to back up this initial statement, with each paragraph focusing on its own point. The length of your paper will determine the amount of examples you need. In general, you’ll likely need at least two to three. Additionally, your examples should be as detailed as possible, citing specific research, case studies, statistics, or anecdotes.

In the counterargument paragraph , the writer acknowledges and refutes opposing viewpoints. Finally, in the conclusion , the writer restates the main argument made in the thesis statement and summarizes the points of the essay. Additionally, the conclusion may offer a final proposal to persuade the reader of the essay’s position.

How to Write an Effective Argumentative Essay, Step by Step

• Choose your topic. Use the list below to help you pick a topic. Ideally, a good argumentative essay topic will be meaningful to you—writing is always stronger when you are interested in the subject matter. In addition, the topic should be complex with plenty of “pro” and “con” arguments. Avoid choosing a topic that is either widely accepted as fact or too narrow. For example, “Is the earth round?” would not be a solid choice.
• Research. Use the library, the web, and any other resources to gather information about your argumentative essay topic. Research widely but smartly. As you go, take organized notes, marking the source of every quote and where it may fit in the scheme of your larger essay. Moreover, remember to look for (and research) possible counterarguments.
• Outline . Using the argument essay format above, create an outline for your essay. Then, brainstorm a thesis statement covering your argument’s main points, and begin to put your examples in order, focusing on logical flow. It’s often best to place your strongest example last.
• Write . Draw on your research and outline to create a first draft. Remember, your first draft doesn’t need to be perfect. (As Voltaire says, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”) Accordingly, just focus on getting the words down on paper.
• Does my thesis statement need to be adjusted?
• Which examples feel strongest? Weakest?
• Do the transitions flow smoothly?
• Do I have a strong opening paragraph?
• Does the conclusion reinforce my argument?

Tips for Revising an Argument Essay

Evaluating your own work can be difficult, so you might consider the following strategies:

• Read your work aloud to yourself.
• Record yourself reading your paper, and listen to the recording.
• Reverse outline your paper. Firstly, next to each paragraph, write a short summary of that paragraph’s main points/idea. Then, read through your reverse outline. Does it have a logical flow? If not, where should you adjust?
• Print out your paper and cut it into paragraphs. What happens when you rearrange the paragraphs?

Good Argumentative Essay Topics for Middle School, High School, and College Students

Family argumentative essay topics.

• Should the government provide financial incentives for families to have children to address the declining birth rate?
• Should we require parents to provide their children with a certain level of nutrition and physical activity to prevent childhood obesity?
• Should parents implement limits on how much time their children spend playing video games?
• Should cell phones be banned from family/holiday gatherings?
• Should we hold parents legally responsible for their children’s actions?
• Should children have the right to sue their parents for neglect?
• Should parents have the right to choose their child’s religion?
• Are spanking and other forms of physical punishment an effective method of discipline?
• Should courts allow children to choose where they live in cases of divorce?
• Should parents have the right to monitor teens’ activity on social media?
• Should parents control their child’s medical treatment, even if it goes against the child’s wishes?
• Should parents be allowed to post pictures of their children on social media without their consent?
• Should fathers have a legal say in whether their partners do or do not receive an abortion?
• Can television have positive developmental benefits on children?
• Should the driving age be raised to prevent teen car accidents?
• Should adult children be legally required to care for their aging parents?

Education Argument Essay Topics

• Should schools ban the use of technology like ChatGPT?
• Are zoos unethical, or necessary for conservation and education?
• To what degree should we hold parents responsible in the event of a school shooting?
• Should schools offer students a set number of mental health days?
• Should school science curriculums offer a course on combating climate change?
• Should public libraries be allowed to ban certain books? If so, what types?
• What role, if any, should prayer play in public schools?
• Should schools push to abolish homework?
• Are gifted and talented programs in schools more harmful than beneficial due to their exclusionary nature?
• Should universities do away with Greek life?
• Should schools remove artwork, such as murals, that some perceive as offensive?
• Should the government grant parents the right to choose alternative education options for their children and use taxpayer funds to support these options?
• Is homeschooling better than traditional schooling for children’s academic and social development?
• Should we require schools to teach sex education to reduce teen pregnancy rates?
• Should we require schools to provide sex education that includes information about both homosexual and heterosexual relationships?
• Should colleges use affirmative action and other race-conscious policies to address diversity on campus?
• Should public schools remove the line “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance?
• Should college admissions officers be allowed to look at students’ social media accounts?
• Should schools abolish their dress codes, many of which unfairly target girls, LGBTQ students, and students of color?
• Should schools be required to stock free period products in bathrooms?
• Should legacy students receive preferential treatment during the college admissions process?
• Are school “voluntourism” trips ethical?

Government Argumentative Essay Topics

• Should the U.S. decriminalize prostitution?
• Should the U.S. issue migration visas to all eligible applicants?
• Should the federal government cancel all student loan debt?
• Should we lower the minimum voting age? If so, to what?
• Should the federal government abolish all laws penalizing drug production and use?
• Should the U.S. use its military power to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan?
• Should the U.S. supply Ukraine with further military intelligence and supplies?
• Should the North and South of the U.S. split up into two regions?
• Should Americans hold up nationalism as a critical value?
• Should we permit Supreme Court justices to hold their positions indefinitely?
• Should Supreme Court justices be democratically elected?
• Is the Electoral College still a productive approach to electing the U.S. president?
• Should the U.S. implement a national firearm registry?
• Is it ethical for countries like China and Israel to mandate compulsory military service for all citizens?
• Should the U.S. government implement a ranked-choice voting system?
• Should institutions that benefited from slavery be required to provide reparations?
• Based on the 1619 project, should history classes change how they teach about the founding of the U.S.?
• Should term limits be imposed on Senators and Representatives? If so, how long?
• Should women be allowed into special forces units?
• Should the federal government implement stronger, universal firearm licensing laws?
• Do public sex offender registries help prevent future sex crimes?
• Should the government be allowed to regulate family size?
• Should all adults legally be considered mandated reporters?
• Should the government fund public universities to make higher education more accessible to low-income students?
• Should the government fund universal preschool to improve children’s readiness for kindergarten?

Health/Bioethics Argumentative Essay Topics

• Should the U.S. government offer its own healthcare plan?
• In the case of highly infectious pandemics, should we focus on individual freedoms or public safety when implementing policies to control the spread?
• Should we legally require parents to vaccinate their children to protect public health?
• Is it ethical for parents to use genetic engineering to create “designer babies” with specific physical and intellectual traits?
• Should the government fund research on embryonic stem cells for medical treatments?
• Should the government legalize assisted suicide for terminally ill patients?
• Should organ donation be mandatory?
• Is cloning animals ethical?
• Should cancer screenings start earlier? If so, what age?
• Is surrogacy ethical?
• Should birth control require a prescription?
• Should minors have access to emergency contraception?
• Should hospitals be for-profit or nonprofit institutions?

Good Argumentative Essay Topics — Continued

Social media argumentative essay topics.

• Should the federal government increase its efforts to minimize the negative impact of social media?
• Do social media and smartphones strengthen one’s relationships?
• Should antitrust regulators take action to limit the size of big tech companies?
• Should social media platforms ban political advertisements?
• Should the federal government hold social media companies accountable for instances of hate speech discovered on their platforms?
• Do apps such as TikTok and Instagram ultimately worsen the mental well-being of teenagers?
• Should governments oversee how social media platforms manage their users’ data?
• Should social media platforms like Facebook enforce a minimum age requirement for users?
• Should social media companies be held responsible for cases of cyberbullying?
• Should the United States ban TikTok?
• Is social media harmful to children?
• Should employers screen applicants’ social media accounts during the hiring process?

Religion Argument Essay Topics

• Should religious institutions be tax-exempt?
• Should religious symbols such as the hijab or crucifix be allowed in public spaces?
• Should religious freedoms be protected, even when they conflict with secular laws?
• Should the government regulate religious practices?
• Should we allow churches to engage in political activities?
• Religion: a force for good or evil in the world?
• Should the government provide funding for religious schools?
• Is it ethical for healthcare providers to deny abortions based on religious beliefs?
• Should religious organizations be allowed to discriminate in their hiring practices?
• Should we allow people to opt out of medical treatments based on their religious beliefs?
• Should the U.S. government hold religious organizations accountable for cases of sexual abuse within their community?
• Should religious beliefs be exempt from anti-discrimination laws?
• Should religious individuals be allowed to refuse services to others based on their beliefs or lifestyles? (As in this famous case .)
• Should the US ban religion-based federal holidays?
• Should public schools be allowed to teach children about religious holidays?

Science Argument Essay Topics

• Would the world be safer if we eliminated nuclear weapons?
• Should scientists bring back extinct animals? If so, which ones?
• Should we hold companies fiscally responsible for their carbon footprint?
• Should we ban pesticides in favor of organic farming methods?
• Should the federal government ban all fossil fuels, despite the potential economic impact on specific industries and communities?
• What renewable energy source should the U.S. invest more money in?
• Should the FDA outlaw GMOs?
• Should we worry about artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence?
• Should the alternative medicine industry be more stringently regulated?
• Is colonizing Mars a viable option?
• Is the animal testing worth the potential to save human lives?

Sports Argument Essay Topics

• Should colleges compensate student-athletes?
• How should sports teams and leagues address the gender pay gap?
• Should youth sports teams do away with scorekeeping?
• Should we ban aggressive contact sports like boxing and MMA?
• Should professional sports associations mandate that athletes stand during the national anthem?
• Should high schools require their student-athletes to maintain a certain GPA?
• Should transgender athletes compete in sports according to their gender identity?
• Should schools ban football due to the inherent danger it poses to players?
• Should performance-enhancing drugs be allowed in sports?
• Do participation trophies foster entitlement and unrealistic expectations?
• Should sports teams be divided by gender?
• Should professional athletes be allowed to compete in the Olympics?
• Should women be allowed on NFL teams?

Technology Argumentative Essay Topics

• Should sites like DALL-E compensate the artists whose work it was trained on?
• Should the federal government make human exploration of space a more significant priority?
• Is it ethical for the government to use surveillance technology to monitor citizens?
• Should websites require proof of age from their users? If so, what age?
• Should we consider A.I.-generated images and text pieces of art?
• Does the use of facial recognition technology violate individuals’ privacy?
• Is online learning as effective as in-person learning?
• Does computing harm the environment?
• Should buying, sharing, and selling collected personal data be illegal?
• Are electric cars really better for the environment?
• Should car companies be held responsible for self-driving car accidents?
• Should private jets be banned?
• Do violent video games contribute to real-life violence?

Business Argument Essay Topics

• Should the U.S. government phase out the use of paper money in favor of a fully digital currency system?
• Should the federal government abolish its patent and copyright laws?
• Should we replace the Federal Reserve with free-market institutions?
• Is free-market ideology responsible for the U.S. economy’s poor performance over the past decade?
• Will cryptocurrencies overtake natural resources like gold and silver?
• Is capitalism the best economic system? What system would be better?
• Should the U.S. government enact a universal basic income?
• Should we require companies to provide paid parental leave to their employees?
• Should the government raise the minimum wage? If so, to what?
• Should antitrust regulators break up large companies to promote competition?
• Is it ethical for companies to prioritize profits over social responsibility?
• Should gig-economy workers like Uber and Lyft drivers be considered employees or independent contractors?
• Should the federal government regulate the gig economy to ensure fair treatment of workers?
• Should the government require companies to disclose the environmental impact of their products?
• Should companies be allowed to fire employees based on political views or activities?
• Should tipping practices be phased out?
• Should employees who choose not to have children be given the same amount of paid leave as parents?
• Should MLMs (multi-level marketing companies) be illegal?
• Should employers be allowed to factor tattoos and personal appearance into hiring decisions?

In Conclusion – Argument Essay Topics

Using the tips above, you can effectively structure and pen a compelling argumentative essay that will wow your instructor and classmates. Remember to craft a thesis statement that offers readers a roadmap through your essay, draw on your sources wisely to back up any claims, and read through your paper several times before it’s due to catch any last-minute proofreading errors. With time, diligence, and patience, your essay will be the most outstanding assignment you’ve ever turned in…until the next one rolls around.

Looking for more fresh and engaging topics for use in the classroom? You might consider checking out the following:

• 125 Good Debate Topics for High School Students
• 150 Good Persuasive Speech Topics
• 7 Best Places to Study
• Guide to the IB Extended Essay
• How to Write the AP Lang Rhetorical Analysis Essay
• AP Lit Reading List
• How to Write the AP Lang Synthesis Essay
• 49 Most Interesting Biology Research Topics
• High School Success

Lauren Green

With a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University and an MFA in Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, Lauren has been a professional writer for over a decade. She is the author of the chapbook  A Great Dark House  (Poetry Society of America, 2023) and a forthcoming novel (Viking/Penguin).

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• The four main types of essay | Quick guide with examples

The Four Main Types of Essay | Quick Guide with Examples

Published on September 4, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An essay is a focused piece of writing designed to inform or persuade. There are many different types of essay, but they are often defined in four categories: argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive essays.

Argumentative and expository essays are focused on conveying information and making clear points, while narrative and descriptive essays are about exercising creativity and writing in an interesting way. At university level, argumentative essays are the most common type. 

In high school and college, you will also often have to write textual analysis essays, which test your skills in close reading and interpretation.

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Table of contents

Argumentative essays, expository essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, textual analysis essays, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about types of essays.

An argumentative essay presents an extended, evidence-based argument. It requires a strong thesis statement —a clearly defined stance on your topic. Your aim is to convince the reader of your thesis using evidence (such as quotations ) and analysis.

Argumentative essays test your ability to research and present your own position on a topic. This is the most common type of essay at college level—most papers you write will involve some kind of argumentation.

The essay is divided into an introduction, body, and conclusion:

• The introduction provides your topic and thesis statement
• The body presents your evidence and arguments
• The conclusion summarizes your argument and emphasizes its importance

The example below is a paragraph from the body of an argumentative essay about the effects of the internet on education. Mouse over it to learn more.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An expository essay provides a clear, focused explanation of a topic. It doesn’t require an original argument, just a balanced and well-organized view of the topic.

Expository essays test your familiarity with a topic and your ability to organize and convey information. They are commonly assigned at high school or in exam questions at college level.

The introduction of an expository essay states your topic and provides some general background, the body presents the details, and the conclusion summarizes the information presented.

A typical body paragraph from an expository essay about the invention of the printing press is shown below. Mouse over it to learn more.

The invention of the printing press in 1440 changed this situation dramatically. Johannes Gutenberg, who had worked as a goldsmith, used his knowledge of metals in the design of the press. He made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, whose durability allowed for the reliable production of high-quality books. This new technology allowed texts to be reproduced and disseminated on a much larger scale than was previously possible. The Gutenberg Bible appeared in the 1450s, and a large number of printing presses sprang up across the continent in the following decades. Gutenberg’s invention rapidly transformed cultural production in Europe; among other things, it would lead to the Protestant Reformation.

A narrative essay is one that tells a story. This is usually a story about a personal experience you had, but it may also be an imaginative exploration of something you have not experienced.

Narrative essays test your ability to build up a narrative in an engaging, well-structured way. They are much more personal and creative than other kinds of academic writing . Writing a personal statement for an application requires the same skills as a narrative essay.

A narrative essay isn’t strictly divided into introduction, body, and conclusion, but it should still begin by setting up the narrative and finish by expressing the point of the story—what you learned from your experience, or why it made an impression on you.

Mouse over the example below, a short narrative essay responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” to explore its structure.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

A descriptive essay provides a detailed sensory description of something. Like narrative essays, they allow you to be more creative than most academic writing, but they are more tightly focused than narrative essays. You might describe a specific place or object, rather than telling a whole story.

Descriptive essays test your ability to use language creatively, making striking word choices to convey a memorable picture of what you’re describing.

A descriptive essay can be quite loosely structured, though it should usually begin by introducing the object of your description and end by drawing an overall picture of it. The important thing is to use careful word choices and figurative language to create an original description of your object.

Mouse over the example below, a response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” to learn more about descriptive essays.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

Though every essay type tests your writing skills, some essays also test your ability to read carefully and critically. In a textual analysis essay, you don’t just present information on a topic, but closely analyze a text to explain how it achieves certain effects.

Rhetorical analysis

A rhetorical analysis looks at a persuasive text (e.g. a speech, an essay, a political cartoon) in terms of the rhetorical devices it uses, and evaluates their effectiveness.

The goal is not to state whether you agree with the author’s argument but to look at how they have constructed it.

The introduction of a rhetorical analysis presents the text, some background information, and your thesis statement; the body comprises the analysis itself; and the conclusion wraps up your analysis of the text, emphasizing its relevance to broader concerns.

The example below is from a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech . Mouse over it to learn more.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

Literary analysis

A literary analysis essay presents a close reading of a work of literature—e.g. a poem or novel—to explore the choices made by the author and how they help to convey the text’s theme. It is not simply a book report or a review, but an in-depth interpretation of the text.

Literary analysis looks at things like setting, characters, themes, and figurative language. The goal is to closely analyze what the author conveys and how.

The introduction of a literary analysis essay presents the text and background, and provides your thesis statement; the body consists of close readings of the text with quotations and analysis in support of your argument; and the conclusion emphasizes what your approach tells us about the text.

Mouse over the example below, the introduction to a literary analysis essay on Frankenstein , to learn more.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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At high school and in composition classes at university, you’ll often be told to write a specific type of essay , but you might also just be given prompts.

Look for keywords in these prompts that suggest a certain approach: The word “explain” suggests you should write an expository essay , while the word “describe” implies a descriptive essay . An argumentative essay might be prompted with the word “assess” or “argue.”

The vast majority of essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Almost all academic writing involves building up an argument, though other types of essay might be assigned in composition classes.

Essays can present arguments about all kinds of different topics. For example:

• In a literary analysis essay, you might make an argument for a specific interpretation of a text
• In a history essay, you might present an argument for the importance of a particular event
• In a politics essay, you might argue for the validity of a certain political theory

An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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50 Argumentative Essay Topics

Illustration by Catherine Song. ThoughtCo. 

• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

An argumentative essay requires you to decide on a topic and take a position on it. You'll need to back up your viewpoint with well-researched facts and information as well. One of the hardest parts is deciding which topic to write about, but there are plenty of ideas available to get you started.

Choosing a Great Argumentative Essay Topic

Students often find that most of their work on these essays is done before they even start writing. This means that it's best if you have a general interest in your subject, otherwise you might get bored or frustrated while trying to gather information. (You don't need to know everything, though.) Part of what makes this experience rewarding is learning something new.

It's best if you have a general interest in your subject, but the argument you choose doesn't have to be one that you agree with.

The subject you choose may not necessarily be one that you are in full agreement with, either. You may even be asked to write a paper from the opposing point of view. Researching a different viewpoint helps students broaden their perspectives. 

Ideas for Argument Essays

Sometimes, the best ideas are sparked by looking at many different options. Explore this list of possible topics and see if a few pique your interest. Write those down as you come across them, then think about each for a few minutes.

Which would you enjoy researching? Do you have a firm position on a particular subject? Is there a point you would like to make sure to get across? Did the topic give you something new to think about? Can you see why someone else may feel differently?

50 Possible Topics

A number of these topics are rather controversial—that's the point. In an argumentative essay, opinions matter and controversy is based on opinions, which are, hopefully, backed up by facts.   If these topics are a little too controversial or you don't find the right one for you, try browsing through persuasive essay and speech topics  as well.

• Is global climate change  caused by humans?
• Is the death penalty effective?
• Is our election process fair?
• Is torture ever acceptable?
• Should men get paternity leave from work?
• Are school uniforms beneficial?
• Do we have a fair tax system?
• Do curfews keep teens out of trouble?
• Is cheating out of control?
• Are we too dependent on computers?
• Should animals be used for research?
• Should cigarette smoking be banned?
• Are cell phones dangerous?
• Are law enforcement cameras an invasion of privacy?
• Do we have a throwaway society?
• Is child behavior better or worse than it was years ago?
• Should companies market to children?
• Should the government have a say in our diets?
• Does access to condoms prevent teen pregnancy?
• Should members of Congress have term limits?
• Are actors and professional athletes paid too much?
• Are CEOs paid too much?
• Should athletes be held to high moral standards?
• Do violent video games cause behavior problems?
• Should creationism be taught in public schools?
• Are beauty pageants exploitative ?
• Should English be the official language of the United States?
• Should the racing industry be forced to use biofuels?
• Should the alcohol drinking age be increased or decreased?
• Should everyone be required to recycle?
• Is it okay for prisoners to vote (as they are in some states)?
• Is it good that same-sex couples are able to marry?
• Are there benefits to attending a single-sex school ?
• Does boredom lead to trouble?
• Should schools be in session year-round ?
• Does religion cause war?
• Should the government provide health care?
• Should abortion be illegal?
• Are girls too mean to each other?
• Is homework harmful or helpful?
• Is the cost of college too high?
• Is college admission too competitive?
• Should euthanasia be illegal?
• Should the federal government legalize marijuana use nationally ?
• Should rich people be required to pay more taxes?
• Should schools require foreign language or physical education?
• Is affirmative action fair?
• Is public prayer okay in schools?
• Are schools and teachers responsible for low test scores?
• Is greater gun control a good idea?
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Are you struggling to find the perfect essay topic that will not only captivate your readers but also ignite your own passion for writing?

It can be frustrating, right? 

The blank page stares back at you, and the pressure to choose an engaging essay topic feels overwhelming. You want something that's not only interesting but also meaningful—a topic that will make your essay shine.

In this comprehensive blog post, we've compiled an extensive essay topics list that covers a wide range of subjects. 

So, let's dive in!

• 1. Essay Topics for Kids
• 2. Essay Topics for Grade 3
• 3. Essay Topics for Grade 4
• 4. Essay Topics for Grade 5
• 5. Essay Topics for Grade 6
• 6. Essay Topics for Grade 7
• 7. Essay Topics for Grade 8
• 8. Essay Topics for Grade 9
• 9. Essay Topics for Grade 10
• 10. Essay Topics for Grade 11
• 11. Essay Topics for Grade 12
• 12. Essay Topics for High School Students
• 13. Best College Essay Topics
• 14. Essay Topics for University Students
• 15. Essay Topics for Different Types of Essays
• 16. Essay Topics by Subjects
• 17. General Essay Topics
• 18. Tips for Choosing the Best Topic

Essay Topics for Kids

• The Benefits of Reading Books for Fun
• The Most Exciting Adventure I've Ever Had
• What Makes a Good Friend?
• My Favorite Hobby and Why I Love It
• If I Could Visit Any Place in the World, Where Would I Go?
• The Importance of Being Kind to Others
• My Role Model and Why I Look Up to Them
• How I Would Spend a Day Without Technology
• My Favorite Season and the Activities I Enjoy During It
• The Best Day of My Life and Why It Was Special

Essay Topics for Grade 3

• My Favorite Animal
• A Day at the Amusement Park
• If I Could Fly
• My Best Friend
• My Favorite Season
• A Special Family Tradition
• If I Found a Magic Wand
• The Importance of Being Kind
• My Dream House
• A Day in the Life of a Superhero

Essay Topics for Grade 4

• My Favorite Book and Why I Love It
• The Importance of Saving Money
• If I Could Travel Back in Time
• A Day Without Electricity
• My Favorite Food and How to Prepare It
• How I Would Spend a Day on a Deserted Island
• The Benefits of Homework and Studying

Essay Topics for Grade 5

• My Dream Vacation Destination
• The Impact of Technology on My Life
• The Importance of Environmental Conservation
• My Hobbies and Why They Matter
• If I Could Change One Thing About the World
• The Role of Friendship in My Life
• A Memorable Family Trip
• The Power of Imagination
• The Benefits of Physical Exercise
• A Day in the Life of My Favorite Book Character

Essay Topics for Grade 6

Let’s explore essay topics for middle school students in grade 6 here:

• My Personal Hero and Their Influence on Me
• The Challenges of Growing Up
• The Significance of Volunteering in the Community
• The Impact of Social Media on Society
• The Value of Setting Goals
• If I Could Invent a New Holiday
• The Role of Art and Music in My Life
• The Benefits of Traveling and Experiencing Different Cultures
• A Time I Overcame a Fear
• The Importance of Time Management

Essay Topics for Grade 7

• The Role of Technology in Education
• The Impact of Bullying and How to Prevent It
• The Value of a Good Education
• The Pros and Cons of Social Networking
• The Effects of Peer Pressure
• If I Could Change One Thing About My School
• The Benefits of Learning a Second Language
• The Importance of Financial Literacy
• A Time I Faced a Difficult Decision
• The Significance of Gender Equality

Essay Topics for Grade 8

• The Influence of Role Models in Our Lives
• The Impact of Climate Change on the Environment
• The Value of Diversity and Inclusion
• The Role of Technology in Shaping the Future
• The Importance of Critical Thinking Skills
• If I Could Travel to Any Period in History
• The Ethics of Animal Testing
• The Benefits of Team Sports
• A Time I Learned a Valuable Life Lesson
• The Significance of Freedom of Speech

Essay Topics for Grade 9

• The Power of Literature to Change Lives
• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Society
• The Value of Civic Engagement
• The Role of Education in Achieving Success
• The Ethics of Genetic Engineering
• If I Could Meet Any Historical Figure
• The Benefits of a Healthy Lifestyle
• The Importance of Financial Responsibility
• A Time I Overcame a Personal Challenge
• The Significance of Global Citizenship

Essay Topics for Grade 10

• The Influence of Media on Public Opinion
• The Impact of Climate Change Policies
• The Value of Ethical Leadership
• The Role of Science in Solving Global Challenges
• The Importance of Mental Health Awareness
• If I Could Change One Aspect of Society
• The Benefits of Learning a Third Language
• The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace
• A Time I Faced an Ethical Dilemma
• The Significance of Cultural Exchange Programs

Essay Topics for Grade 11

• The Role of Technology in Shaping the Job Market
• The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
• The Value of College Education in Career Development
• The Ethics of Bioengineering and Genetic Modification
• The Importance of Ethical Business Practices
• If I Could Travel to the Future
• The Benefits of Entrepreneurship
• The Significance of Political Engagement among Youth
• A Time I Challenged a Deeply Held Belief
• The Role of Art in Social Change

Essay Topics for Grade 12

• The Influence of Literature on Social Change
• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Employment
• The Value of Critical Thinking in Decision-Making
• The Ethics of Privacy in the Digital Age
• The Importance of Environmental Sustainability
• If I Could Leave a Legacy for Future Generations
• The Benefits of Internships and Work Experience
• The Significance of Advocacy for Human Rights
• A Time I Took a Stand for a Cause
• The Role of Education in Shaping Values and Beliefs

Essay Topics for High School Students

Have a look at the following topics for high school essays to come up with your own ideas.

• Does the fashion industry need to change the way they advertise?
• Do beauty pageants carry any benefits for women?
• Should women get plastic surgery?
• What instigated World War 2?
• What do people mean when they say “Fake news?”
• Can constant use of drugs cause brain damage?
• Can gun control help in regulating crime?
• Is summer school designed to help children?
• Methods that are used by professionals to get their dream job.
• The ways to deal with on-campus violence.

Best College Essay Topics

• Role of Modern Media in contributing to eating disorders.
• Is technology turning people into zombies?
• Is censorship on the internet necessary?
• Will there be a 3rd World War?
• Should every student have the right to choose the discipline they are interested in?
• What does it take to become a politician?
• The reasons behind high unemployment rates.
• The aftermath of earthquakes.
• Which countries have the most corruption?
• Should there be a restriction on the sales and production of tobacco?

Essay Topics for University Students

• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Job Market.
• The Ethical Dilemmas of Human Gene Editing.
• The Role of Social Media in Shaping Political Movements.
• The Influence of Climate Change on Global Security.
• The Benefits and Drawbacks of Online Education.
• The Intersection of Technology and Mental Health.
• The Economic Implications of Renewable Energy Adoption.
• The Future of Space Exploration and Colonization.
• The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare.
• The Cultural Significance of Contemporary Art Movements.

Essay Topics for Different Types of Essays

For writing an essay, the first step is to decide on the topic.

Here, you can find interesting topics and ideas for different types of essays to help you get started.

Controversial Argumentative Essay Topics

• Is Climate Change Primarily Caused by Human Activities?
• Should Affirmative Action Policies be Continued in College Admissions?
• Is Universal Healthcare a Viable Option for the United States?
• Should Euthanasia be Allowed for Severely Disabled Newborns?
• Is Genetic Engineering Ethical in Humans?
• Should the Voting Age be Lowered to 16?
• Is Internet Censorship Necessary to Protect National Security?
• Should Hate Speech be Protected as Free Speech?
• Does asking someone to reduce weight equate to body shaming?
• Should kids be allowed to adopt e-gaming as a progressive career?

Funny Argumentative Essay Topics

• Is pizza a proper breakfast food, and why should it be?
• Should cats be considered superior to dogs as household pets?
• Is it ethical for a sock to vanish in the laundry, and where do they go?
• Are aliens avoiding Earth because they fear our reality TV shows?
• Can you survive a zombie apocalypse using only office supplies?
• Is procrastination an art form, and how can you perfect it?
• Should kids' cartoons be considered educational for adults?
• Can you convince your boss that napping at work increases productivity?
• Is laughter truly the best medicine, and can it cure anything?
• Can you convince your roommate that washing dishes is an ancient martial art?

In need of more debatable essay topics? We have a comprehensive list of more excellent argumentative essay topics to assist you.

Persuasive Essay Topics

• Should Recycling Be Mandatory in Every Household?
• Is Single-Use Plastic a Menace to the Environment, and Should It Be Banned?
• Should Schools Implement Uniform Dress Codes to Promote Equality?
• Is Standardized Testing an Effective Measure of Student Knowledge?
• Is Online Learning as Effective as Traditional Classroom Education?
• Should Vaccinations Be Mandatory for All Children to Ensure Public Health?
• Is Animal Testing Justified in the Name of Scientific Progress?
• Should Governments Impose Higher Taxes on Junk Food and Sugary Drinks?
• Is Social Media Detrimental to Mental Health, and Should It Be Regulated?
• Should College Athletes Be Paid for Their Participation in Sports?

Read our comprehensive guide to persuasive essay topics to find a trending topic or a good idea for your paper.

Cause and Effect Essay Topics

• Causes and Effects of Stress in Modern Society
• The Consequences of Bullying on Mental Health
• Environmental Pollution: Causes, Effects, and Solutions
• The Influence of Parental Divorce on Children's Well-being
• The Causes and Effects of Obesity in Developed Countries
• The Causes and Effects of Economic Inequality
• The Causes and Consequences of Academic Procrastination
• The Impact of Social Pressure on Teenagers' Decision-Making
• The Causes and Effects of Drug Addiction
• The Influence of Early Education on a Child's Future Success

Check out this comprehensive guide on 100+ cause and effect essay topics for more ideas.

Compare and Contrast Essay Topics

• Comparison of High School vs. College Life
• Contrast of Traditional Education vs. Online Learning
• Comparison of Two Major Religions: Christianity vs. Islam
• Contrasting the Novels of Jane Austen vs. Emily Brontë
• Comparing Two Art Movements: Renaissance vs. Baroque
• Contrasting Classical Music vs. Jazz
• Comparing Two Smartphone Brands: iPhone vs. Android
• Contrast of Two Political Systems: Democracy vs. Authoritarianism
• Comparison of Traditional Medicine vs. Modern Medicine
• Comparing the Characters of Romeo and Juliet vs. West Side Story

If you need more ideas, here are some interesting compare contrast essay topics for your help.

Narrative Essay Topics

• My First Day of School: A Memorable Experience
• The Day I Overcame My Greatest Fear
• The Most Important Lesson I Learned from a Family Member
• The Time I Achieved a Personal Goal, I Never Thought Possible
• The Day I Discovered My Passion for a Hobby or Interest
• The Impact of a Life-Altering Event on My Perspective
• The Story Behind My Most Prized Possession
• My Experience as a Volunteer or in Community Service
• The Day I Realized the Power of Kindness
• A Special Bond I Share with a Childhood Friend

Need more topics? Check out this extensive blog on narrative essay topics for your next assignment.

Expository Essay Topics

• The Impact of Technology on Society: Past, Present, and Future
• The Process of Photosynthesis and Its Importance in Nature
• The History and Significance of the Industrial Revolution
• Understanding the Basics of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology
• The Role of Education in Shaping Future Career Success
• The Significance of Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World
• Exploring the Psychology of Human Behavior and Decision-Making
• The Process of How a Bill Becomes a Law in Government
• The Role of Renewable Energy Sources in Combating Climate Change
• Understanding the History and Culture of a Specific Country or Region

Here are some more intriguing expository essay topics to assist you.

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Topics

• Evaluating the Persuasive Strategies in a Self-Help Book or Article
• Examining the Rhetoric of a Famous Political Campaign Ad
• Analyzing the Persuasive Techniques in a TED Talk of Your Choice
• Analyzing the Rhetoric of a Controversial News Article
• Evaluating the Persuasive Techniques in a Super Bowl Commercial
• Examining the Rhetorical Appeals in a Famous Courtroom Speech
• Evaluating the Use of Rhetorical Devices in a Political Debate
• Analyzing the Persuasive Strategies in a Feminist Manifesto
• Evaluating the Rhetorical Appeals in a Social Justice Speech
• Examining the Rhetorical Techniques in a Historical Letter or Document

Check out this extensive blog on 100+ rhetorical analysis essay topics for more topics.

Analytical Essay Topics

• The impact of Martin Luther King's speech “I have a dream” on modern American politics
• The significance of Pablo Picasso's artwork “The Old Guitarist”
• Important characteristics of Denzel Washington Speech at the University Of Pennsylvania
• Impact of the psychoanalytic theory on modern psychology
• The impact of Romeo and Juliet on the modern concept of love
• The significance of national security strategy 2018 on great power politics
• How does the author's treatment of the subject matter in “The Catcher in the Rye” differ from that in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How are the characters in “To Kill a Mockingbird” used to illustrate different aspects of racial prejudice in America during the 1930s?
• How is the treatment of love different in Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet” and “Othello”?
• How does the author use symbolism to develop the theme of good vs. evil in “The Scarlet Letter”?

Explore the blog to get some more ideas about interesting analytical essay topics .

Descriptive Essay Topics

• A Walk Through a Peaceful Forest in Autumn
• A Vibrant Farmers' Market on a Saturday Morning
• A Day at the Beach: Sun, Sand, and Waves
• The Serene Beauty of a Starry Night Sky
• A Memorable Childhood Christmas Morning
• The Sights and Sounds of a Carnival or Fair
• The First Day of Spring: Nature's Reawakening
• A Visit to a Historical Landmark or Museum
• A Gourmet Dining Experience at Your Favorite Restaurant
• The Excitement of a Music Concert or Festival

Check out this extensive list of descriptive essay topics ideas for your help.

Informative Essay Topics

• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Job Market
• The History and Cultural Significance of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics
• The Benefits and Risks of Gene Editing Technology
• Exploring Renewable Energy Sources: Solar, Wind, and Hydroelectric Power
• The Effects of Climate Change on Polar Ice Caps and Wildlife
• A Comprehensive Guide to Effective Time Management
• Exploring the Role of Nutrition in Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle
• The Significance of Space Exploration: Past, Present, and Future
• The Origins and Cultural Significance of a Traditional Festival
• A Guide to Sustainable Farming and Agriculture Practices

Here’s a comprehensive list of interesting, 100+ informative essay topics .

Definition Essay Topics

• The Meaning of "Success" in Modern Society
• Defining the Concept of "Love" in All Its Forms
• The True Definition of "Friendship"
• The Ever-Changing Meaning of "Freedom"
• Exploring the Notion of "Happiness"
• Defining "Cultural Diversity" and Its Importance
• The Multifaceted Definition of "Beauty"
• The Various Interpretations of "Justice"
• Understanding "Mental Health" and Its Stigma
• Defining "Leadership" and Its Qualities
• The Meaning of "Sustainability" in Environmental Contexts
• Exploring the Concept of "Feminism"
• Defining "Social Media" and Its Impact
• The True Definition of "Equality"
• Exploring the Meaning of "Art" in Contemporary Culture

Problem Solution Essay Topics

• How to prevent social media bullying?
• How to help a depressed person?
• How texting affects face-to-face relationships?
• How to prevent injuries in sports?
• How can parents teach their children about time management?
• How to deal with manipulative and dominating people?
• How can schools and colleges be made safer?
• How to prevent deaths due to drunk driving?
• How to help families with a child with mental illness?
• How to stop violence in schools?

Personal Essay Topics

• A person you admire the most.
• Are you addicted to games?
• How did you learn to draw?
• What is your life’s goal?
• Things you hate the most?
• Why do I prefer online shopping?
• Your biggest achievement.
• What does success mean to you?
• What annoys you the most?
• Why is volunteering important?

Proposal Essay Topics

• Promoting Sustainable Transportation
• Enhancing Cybersecurity Education
• Implementing Recycling Programs in Schools
• Reducing Plastic Waste in the Community
• Supporting Small Local Businesses
• Improving Mental Health Support in Schools
• Implementing Renewable Energy Initiatives
• Enhancing Campus Sustainability Efforts
• Combating Food Insecurity in Underserved Communities
• Promoting Gender Equality in the Workplace

Evaluation Essay Topics

• Evaluate the effectiveness of online learning compared to traditional classroom education.
• Evaluate the impact of social media on interpersonal relationships and communication.
• Assess the quality and impact of a recent movie or television series.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of a specific diet or nutrition plan for weight loss.
• Assess the environmental impact of electric vehicles compared to traditional gasoline-powered cars.
• Evaluate the performance and features of a popular smartphone or electronic gadget.
• Assess the impact of a particular social or political policy on society.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign for a well-known brand.
• Assess the impact of a recent technological advancement on daily life.
• Evaluate the quality and impact of a famous work of literature or art.

Process Analysis Essay Topics

• How to Plan and Organize a Successful Study Group.
• The Process of Making Homemade Pizza from Scratch.
• Steps to Mastering a Musical Instrument.
• How to Write a Winning College Application Essay.
• The Process of Brewing Your Own Craft Beer.
• Steps to Launching a Small Business Online.
• How to Effectively Manage Time and Prioritize Tasks.
• The Art of DIY Home Renovation.
• The Process of Creating a Stunning Piece of Art.
• How to Cook a Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner.

Check out some other process analysis essay topics for inspiration!

Illustration Essay Topics

• Illustrate the Impact of Technology on Everyday Life.
• Illustrate the Traits of a Successful Leader.
• The Role of Music in Shaping Emotions and Moods.
• Illustrate the Benefits of a Healthy Lifestyle.
• The Influence of Social Media on Personal Relationships.
• Illustrate the Impact of Cultural Diversity in a Community.
• The Importance of Effective Communication in the Workplace.
• Illustrate the Evolution of Fashion Trends Over the Decades.
• The Characteristics of a Memorable Family Vacation.
• Illustrate the Process of Achieving a Personal Goal.

Here’s a list of some more creative and engaging illustration essay topics .

Exploratory Essay Topics

• Exploring the Causes and Effects of Climate Change.
• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Job Market: An Exploration.
• Exploring the Role of Media in Shaping Public Opinion.
• The Influence of Nature vs. Nurture on Human Behavior.
• An Exploration of the Ethics of Genetic Engineering.
• The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health: An In-Depth Examination.
• Exploring the Challenges and Benefits of Online Education.
• An Exploration of the Implications of Universal Basic Income.
• The Dynamics of Family Relationships: An In-Depth Analysis.
• Exploring the Impact of Literature and Art on Society.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

Classification Essay Topics

• Types of Pet Owners: A Classification.
• Classification of Musical Genres: From Classical to Hip-Hop.
• Types of Travelers: Exploring the Adventurer, Relaxer, and Culture Enthusiast.
• Classifying Different Types of Social Media Users.
• Types of Students in a Classroom: From the Overachiever to the Laid-Back.
• Classifying Different Styles of Fashion: Bohemian, Classic, and Trendy.
• Types of Moviegoers: The Action Lover, Rom-Com Fan, and Film Buff.
• Classifying Different Forms of Exercise: Yoga, Weightlifting, and Cardio.
• Types of Foodies: From Gourmet Enthusiasts to Fast Food Lovers.
• Classifying Various Types of Vehicles: Cars, Motorcycles, and Bicycles

Check out other compelling classification essay topics for more ideas.

Synthesis Essay Topics

• The Electoral College as a tool to determine the outcome of Presidential elections.
• Predicting animal adaptation by examining various evolutionary theories.
• A side-by-side analysis of the theories behind JFK's shooting
• Economic and social impacts of proposed legislation by Donald Trump
• Comparing plans to attract more visitors and create business opportunities.
• Examining crime rates in urban locations and the countryside
• Analysis of different theories on the causes of the Great Depression
• An account of the American Civil War from historical texts
• A synthesis of different theories of motivation to create behavioral change
• A unified approach to managing diabetes by examining global research from around the world
• The scientific method as a means of acquiring knowledge

Explore the blog for some more synthesis essay topics .

Essay Topics by Subjects

Students are often asked by teachers to write essays on a variety of topics related to a particular subject. 

The sheer number of discussion areas can be overwhelming for students, making it difficult to choose a good essay topic. 

This list of essay topics by subject can help you narrow down your choices and find a topic that is both interesting and relevant to your studies.

Essay Topics on Languages

• The change of language over time.
• The use of text messages has ruined the modern language: is it true?
• How to explore new languages.
• Neuro-linguistic programming and how it works.
• Physical communication or verbal communication: which is effective?
• Explore the ways in which people can communicate.
• Benefits of learning a second language.
• Explain how learning languages work.
• Is learning a new language in high school important?
• Why is English important?

Essay Topics on Social Media

• Influence of social media on youth.
• What are the cons of social media?
• Should texting and driving be illegal?
• The impact of social media on the life of teenagers.
• How does social media affect the relationship between parents and children?
• Does social media like Pinterest should be used in the classrooms?
• How to handle the problem of being bullied through social media?
• What rules should students follow when posting to social media?

Essay Topics on Technology

• Technology and the global economy.
• The positives and effects of technology.
• The role of 3-D printing  in Medicine.
• What science has to offer to disabled people?
• Face detection software and the problem of identity theft.
• Adding connectivity to our home devices: is it helpful or not?
• Cloud computing and artificial intelligence
• How has technology changed our life?
• Life without technology
• Technology has its own rules

Essay Topics on Current Affairs

• The Global Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Lessons Learned.
• Climate Change and Its Effects on Biodiversity and Weather Patterns.
• The Role of Social Media in Shaping Modern Political Discourse.
• Cybersecurity Threats in the Digital Age and Strategies for Protection.
• The Influence of Artificial Intelligence on the Future of Work.
• The Refugee Crisis: Challenges, Solutions, and Global Responsibility.
• Racial and Social Justice Movements in the 21st Century.
• The Geopolitical Impact of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
• The Rise of Populism and Nationalism in Western Democracies.
• The Implications of Space Exploration and Colonization for Humanity.

Essay Topics on Corruption

• The Impact of Corruption on Economic Development
• The Relationship Between Corruption and Inequality
• The Role of the Media in Combating Corruption
• The Impact of Corruption on Political Stability
• The Relationship Between Corruption and Crime
• The Use of Technology in Combating Corruption
• International Cooperation in Combating Corruption
• The Private Sector and Combating Corruption
• Civil Society and Combating Corruption
• The Causes of Corruption

Essay Topics on Climate Change

• The effects of climate change on human health
• The impact of climate change on global food security
• The economic impacts of climate change
• The role of the media in communicating the risks of climate change
• The ethical implications of climate change
• The Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture
• The Impacts of Climate Change on Wildlife
• The Potential Solutions to Climate Change
• The Challenges in Implementing Solutions to Climate Change
• The Role of the Individual in Solving Climate Change

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• The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health and Well-being.
• Social Media's Role in Shaping Political Discourse and Activism.
• The Effects of Social Media on Interpersonal Relationships.
• Cyberbullying and Online Harassment: Challenges and Solutions.
• Privacy Concerns in the Age of Social Media: Balancing Sharing and Security.
• Social Media Influencers: Their Influence and Responsibilities.
• The Use of Social Media in Education: Pros and Cons.
• Social Media Marketing: Strategies, Trends, and Ethics.
• Fake News and Misinformation on Social Media: The Role of Fact-Checking.
• The Future of Social Media: Emerging Trends and Technologies.

Essay Topics on Democracy

• The Evolution of Democracy: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times.
• The Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century.
• The Role of Media in Sustaining a Healthy Democracy.
• Democracy and Its Implications for Economic Development.
• Electoral Systems: Comparing First-Past-The-Post and Proportional Representation.
• The Influence of Money in Politics and Its Impact on Democracy.
• Direct vs. Representative Democracy: Which Is More Effective?
• The Role of Civil Society in Strengthening Democracy.
• The Importance of Civic Education in Sustaining Democracy.
• Threats to Democracy: Populism, Authoritarianism, and Erosion of Institutions.

Essay Topics on Covid-19 

• The current COVID-19 pandemic
• COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on families
• Coronavirus and its medication
• How does coronavirus damage a person's health?
• How did the world change after the coronavirus?
• Negative side effects of Covid-19
• Everything you need to know about the coronavirus
• How did Covid-19 impact businesses?
• What medicines are good for coronavirus?
• How does covid-19 lead to cabin fever and anxiety symptoms?

Essay Topics on Social Issues

• The Impact of Social Media on Social Isolation and Loneliness.
• Homelessness in Urban Centers: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions.
• Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System: Analyzing the Data.
• Gender Inequality in the Workplace: Progress and Challenges.
• The Opioid Epidemic: Root Causes and Approaches to Combat It.
• Environmental Racism: Communities at Risk.
• Access to Healthcare: A Basic Human Right or a Privilege?
• Bullying in Schools: Strategies for Prevention and Intervention.
• Immigration Policies and Their Effects on Society.
• Aging Population: Challenges and Opportunities in an Aging Society

Essay Topics on Current Issues

• The Global Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned and Future Preparedness.
• Climate Change and the Urgency for Sustainable Solutions.
• Cybersecurity Threats in the Modern World: Protecting Digital Assets.
• Vaccine Hesitancy and Public Health: Addressing Misinformation.
• The Role of Big Tech in Shaping the Digital Landscape.
• Refugee Crises Around the World: Seeking Global Solutions.
• Income Inequality: The Wealth Gap and Its Social Implications.
• Political Polarization and Its Impact on Governance.
• Food Security: Feeding the World's Growing Population.
• The Ethics of AI and Automation in the Workforce.

Essay Topics About Mental Health

• The prevalence of mental health disorders in the United States.
• The impact of mental health disorders on individuals and society.
• The causes of mental health disorders.
• The treatments available for mental health disorders.
• The challenges faced by individuals with mental health disorders.
• CBT for obsessive compulsive disorders
• Role of Antidepressants in treating Depression
• Impact of noise pollution on mental health
• Social media use leads to negative self-esteem
• Attachment issues in adults are related to childhood parenting issues

Essay Topics about Music

• The Influence of Music on Mood and Emotions.
• The Evolution of Hip-Hop Culture.
• The Impact of Music on Social Movements.
• The Role of Music in Different Cultures.
• The Connection Between Music and Memory.
• The Influence of Music on Fashion and Style.
• Music and Its Effects on Brain Development in Children.
• The Significance of Music Festivals in Modern Culture.
• Music Therapy: Healing through Sound.
• The Impact of Technology on the Music Industry.

Essay Topics About Love

• The Different Types of Love: Exploring Romantic, Familial, and Platonic Love.
• The Impact of Love on Mental and Physical Health.
• Love in Literature: Analyzing Famous Love Stories in Classic Novels.
• The Role of Love in Shaping Our Personal Identities.
• Unconditional Love: Examining the Bonds Between Parents and Children.
• The Evolution of Love in the Digital Age: Online Dating and Relationships.
• Love and Self-Esteem: How Our Self-Perception Affects Our Ability to Love.
• The Connection Between Love and Empathy in Human Relationships.
• Love and Attachment Styles: Understanding How We Form Connections.
• The Cultural Variations in Expressing and Experiencing Love.

Essay Topics About Yourself

• Introduce yourself in a unique way that captures your reader's attention.
• Discuss an accomplishment that you are proud of, and how it has shaped who you are today.
• Describe a time when you faced a challenge, and how you overcame it.
• Share an experience that has helped to shape your values and beliefs.
• What are your hobbies and interests?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• What are your career aspirations?
• Describe a time when you faced a challenge and how you coped with it.
• Tell us about a time when you were proud of yourself and why.
• What are your plans for the future?

Essay Topics About the Environment

• The Impact of Climate Change on Global Weather Patterns.
• Deforestation and Its Effects on Biodiversity.
• The Role of Renewable Energy Sources in Combating Climate Change.
• Plastic Pollution: Analyzing the Impact on Marine Ecosystems.
• The Importance of Environmental Education in Schools.
• Urbanization and Its Environmental Consequences.
• Sustainable Agriculture: Balancing Food Production and Environmental Conservation.
• The Significance of Wildlife Conservation and Preservation.
• The Ethics of Animal Testing in Scientific Research.
• Environmental Justice: Addressing Disparities in Environmental Quality.

General Essay Topics

• The Impact of Video Games on College Students.
• The Importance of Physical Education in Schools.
• Social Media Platforms and their Influence.
• Negative Impact of Social Media on Students.
• Public Schools vs. Private Schools: A Comparative Analysis.
• Analyzing College Students' Point of View on Video Game Addiction.
• Persuading for Environmental Conservation.
• The Role of Social Media in Modern Marketing.
• The Impact of Technology on the Job Market.
• Analyzing Point of View in a Legal Context.

Tips for Choosing the Best Topic

Choosing the right topic for your essay is a critical step in the essay writing process. It sets the tone for your work and can greatly impact your ability to engage your readers. Here are some tips to help you select the best topic:

• Consider Your Interests

Start by thinking about your own interests and passions. Writing about a topic you're enthusiastic about will make the entire process more enjoyable and may result in a more engaging piece.

• Narrow or Broad

Decide whether you want a broad or narrow topic. Broad topics allow for a wide range of discussion, while narrow ones allow for deeper exploration of specific aspects. Your choice depends on your assignment and word limit.

Consider the relevance of the topic to your audience and context. Is it something your readers will find interesting or valuable? Is it aligned with the purpose of your essay, whether it's informative, persuasive, or analytical?

• Research Availability

Ensure there's enough research material available on the topic. If you're writing a research-based essay, it's crucial to have access to credible sources to support your arguments.

• Audience Considerations

Tailor your topic to your target audience. Consider their interests, knowledge level, and preferences when choosing a subject that will resonate with them.

• Current Events

If it's appropriate for your essay type, explore current events and trending topics. They can add relevance and timeliness to your writing.

• Brainstorming

Spend some time brainstorming ideas. Create lists, mind maps, or free-write to generate a variety of potential topics. Don't censor yourself during this process; just let the ideas flow.

In conclusion, selecting the best topic for your essay is a pivotal decision that can significantly impact the quality and engagement level of your writing. 

By considering your interests, you can set yourself up for success in crafting an exceptional essay.

At MyPerfectWords.com, we understand that the journey of essay writing begins with choosing the right topic.

Moreover, our team of experienced writers is here to assist you at every stage of the writing process, from topic selection to the final polished draft. Visit our essay writing service now and take the first step toward academic excellence. 

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Nova Allison is a Digital Content Strategist with over eight years of experience. Nova has also worked as a technical and scientific writer. She is majorly involved in developing and reviewing online content plans that engage and resonate with audiences. Nova has a passion for writing that engages and informs her readers.

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31 Of The Most Beautiful And Profound Passages In Literature You’ll Want To Read Over And Over Again

• https://thoughtcatalog.com/?p=493373

Whenever I’m feeling uninspired I look to a collection of my favorite literary quotes I keep in a document on my computer. Today was one of those days. As I was re-reading some of these and remembering why I love writing, reading, and the power of words and a good story, I thought perhaps someone somewhere out there might be feeling the same as me this morning. Here are 31 of the most beautiful passages in literature .

“Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“i took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. i am, i am, i am.” – sylvia plath, the bell jar, “we believe that we can change the things around us in accordance with our desires—we believe it because otherwise we can see no favourable outcome. we do not think of the outcome which generally comes to pass and is also favourable: we do not succeed in changing things in accordance with our desires, but gradually our desires change. the situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant to us. we have failed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us beyond it, and then if we turn round to gaze into the distance of the past, we can barely see it, so imperceptible has it become.” – marcel proust, in search of lost time, “the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” – antoine de saint-exupéry, the little prince, “hello babies. welcome to earth. it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. it’s round and wet and crowded. on the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. there’s only one rule that i know of, babies-“god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” – kurt vonnegut, god bless you, mr. rosewater, “why, sometimes i’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – lewis carroll, alice in wonderland, “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – oscar wilde, lady windermere’s fan, “i must not fear. fear is the mind-killer. fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. i will face my fear. i will permit it to pass over me and through me. and when it has gone past i will turn the inner eye to see its path. where the fear has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain.” – frank herbert, dune, “nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” (don’t let the bastards grind you down) – margaret atwood, the handmaid’s tale, “just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. you might want to think about that. you forget some things, dont you yes. you forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” – cormac mccarthy,  the road, “you can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. but it’s a catch-22: all of those things you’re willing to lose are what make you recognizable. lose them, and you’ve lost yourself.” – jodi picoult, handle with care, “the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” – jack kerouac, on the road, “he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” ― gabriel garcí­a márquez, love in the time of cholera, “there is an idea of a patrick bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though i can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: i simply am not there.” – bret easton ellis, american psycho, “sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. you change direction but the sandstorm chases you. you turn again, but the storm adjusts. over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. why because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. this storm is you. something inside of you. so all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. there’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. that’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine., and you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. no matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. people will bleed there, and you will bleed too. hot, red blood. you’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others., and once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. you won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. but one thing is certain. when you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. that’s what this storm’s all about.” – haruki murakami, kafka on the shore, “a heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others” – l. frank baum, the wonderful wizard of oz, “sometimes i can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives i’m not living.”- jonathan safran foer, extremely loud and incredibly close, “the most important things are the hardest to say. they are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. but it’s more than that, isn’t it the most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. and you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. that’s the worst, i think. when the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” stephen king, different seasons, “i don’t have any problem understanding why people flunk out of college or quit their jobs or cheat on each other or break the law or spray-paint walls. a little bit outside of things is where some people feel each other. we do it to replace the frame of family. we do it to erase and remake our origins in their own images. to say, i too was here.” – lidia yuknavitch, the chronology of water, “i never believed in santa claus. none of us kids did. mom and dad refused to let us. they couldn’t afford expensive presents and they didn’t want us to think we weren’t as good as other kids who, on christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by santa claus. dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when christmas came that year, we had no money at all. on christmas eve, dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one., “pick out your favorite star”, dad said., “i like that one” i said., dad grinned, “that’s venus”, he said. he explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed., “i like it anyway” i said., “what the hell,” dad said. “it’s christmas. you can have a planet if you want.” and he gave me venus., venus didn’t have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to earth’s, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more. “so,” dad said, “when the sun starts to burn out and earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to venus to get warm. and they’ll have to get permission from your descendants first., we laughed about all the kids who believed in the santa myth and got nothing for christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. “years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten,” dad said, “you’ll still have your stars.” – jeannette walls, the glass castle, “lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. my sin, my soul. lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. lo. lee. ta. she was lo, plain lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. she was lola in slacks. she was dolly at school. she was dolores on the dotted line. but in my arms she was always lolita. did she have a precursor she did, indeed she did. in point of fact, there might have been no lolita at all had i not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. in a princedom by the sea. oh when about as many years before lolita was born as my age was that summer. you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. look at this tangle of thorns.” vladimir nabokov, lolita, “you think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless. you think that because he doesn’t want you anymore that he is right — that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. if he throws you out, then you are garbage. you think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. don’t. it’s a bad word, ‘belong.’ especially when you put it with somebody you love. love shouldn’t be like that. did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain they circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. but you know what you go up top and what do you see his head. the clouds never cover the head. his head pokes through, beacuse the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. they let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. you can’t own a human being. you can’t lose what you don’t own. suppose you did own him. could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you you really want somebody like that somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door you don’t, do you and neither does he. you’re turning over your whole life to him. your whole life, girl. and if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him he can’t value you more than you value yourself.” – toni morrison, song of solomon, “…i think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. we forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. we forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.” ― joan didion, slouching towards bethlehem, “i don’t let anyone touch me,” i finally said. why not” why not because i was tired of men. hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. men who didn’t come to the emergency room with you, men who left on christmas eve. men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them then changed their minds. forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs. (…) it was a play and i knew how it ended, i didn’t want to audition for any of the roles. it was no game, no casual thrill. it was three-bullet russian roulette.” – janet fitch, white oleander, “i wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. not fuck, like in those movies. not even have sex. just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. but i lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and i was gawky and she was gorgeous and i was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. so i walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, i was drizzle and she was hurricane.” ― john green, looking for alaska, “but i tried, didn’t i goddamnit, at least i did that.” – ken kesey, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, “if you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start. this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. it could mean not eating for three or four days. it could mean freezing on a park bench. it could mean jail. it could mean derision. it could mean mockery–isolation. isolation is the gift. all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. and, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. and it will be better than anything else you can imagine. if you’re going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that. you will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. you will ride life straight to perfect laughter. it’s the only good fight there is.” ― charles bukowski, factotum, “i will be very careful the next time i fall in love, she told herself. also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. she was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. they weren’t worth it in the long run. they were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was complicated. they were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only einstein could fix it. she wanted her next lover to be a broom.” ― richard brautigan, sombrero fallout, “usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. “i’m okay” we say. “i’m alright”. but sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can’t get it off. that’s when you realize that sometimes it isn’t even an answer–it’s a question. even now, i wonder how much of my life is convinced.” ― markus zusak, the book thief, “i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. i love you simply, without problems or pride: i love you in this way because i do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no i or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when i fall asleep your eyes close.” ― pablo neruda, 100 love sonnets, “it doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. i want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing., it doesn’t interest me how old you are. i want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive., it doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. i want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further paini want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it., i want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human., it doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. i want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy., i want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence., i want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “yes”, it doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. i want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children., it doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. i want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back., it doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. i want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away., i want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”, ― oriah mountain dreamer, the invitation, koty neelis.

Former senior staff writer and producer at Thought Catalog.

Keep up with Koty on Twitter

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201 Interesting & Fun Essay Topics for Students [UPD 2024]

Looking for unique essay topics to spark your interest and impress your tutors? Who said that academic writing could not be fun? Choose an interesting essay topic, and you will start enjoying it. You will surely find some topics matching your interests among these top 146 best essay topics.

In this article, you’ll find out:

• What is an interesting essay topic?
• How to choose good topics to write about for an essay?
• 146 captivating essay topics that will inspire you!
• 📋 What Is an Interesting Topic?
• 💡 Interesting Things for an Essay
• 🖊️ Good Topics
• 👻 Fun Topics
• 💭 Thought-provoking Topics
• ➕ Other Interesting Topics
• ✍️ Proposal Topics
• ✔️ Possible Mistakes

🔗 References

📋 what is an interesting essay topic.

You might be wondering how to define what topic can be called ‘interesting.’ When choosing a topic for your essay, use these tips to understand whether you should pick a particular topic.

• Choose a topic that interests you. It is essential, as you might spend quite some time researching, thinking, and writing about it. When you’re truly passionate about your essay topic, you’re more likely to succeed. Also, keep in mind that readers will definitely feel if you enjoyed the writing process.
• Pay attention to the formulation of your topic. It might be challenging to formulate a good topic. It shouldn’t be too broad and, at the same time, too narrow.

Let’s have a look at one example:

• If you’re still unsure what topic you should pick, get inspired with our list!

💡 Interesting Topics to Write an Essay About

Here is a list of interesting essay topics for students who like to write about debatable issues and are always taking sides in disputes.

Each of these topics provokes everyone to join the discussion—and may start debates that last for an hour or more! With such exciting topics, people are captivated to read your essays, whether the essay topic is persuasive or not, and offer their ideas to support or contradict your point of view.

• Extreme sports . Is adrenaline worth the risk?
• Sciences . Is genetic engineering the answer to ending global hunger?
• Justice . If athletes cannot use steroids, is it fair for models to use Photoshop?
• Philosophy . Philosophical issue: Should abortion be legal?
• Social standards . Do all people need to be of the same size, and does beauty need any standards?
• Family, life, & experiences. How to put a baby to bed?
• Gaming . If there are video game competitions, can gaming be regarded as a sport?
• History . Was Korean War a Civil War or an International War?
• Social networks. Do they improve communication skills or reduce social activity in the real world?
• Psychology. Should children be punished ?
• Schools . Should phones and social media be banned in classrooms?
• Family psychology . Are women better parents than men?
• Education . Nature versus nurture – what wins?
• Entertainment & Media . Social media marketing for generation Y.
• Genetics and crime . Can “bad” genes be an excuse for divorce and crime?
• Behavior studies . Do violent video games cause behavior problems?
• Social studies. Does money determine success?
• Politics & Government. Marijuana legalization: It’s time to make it.
• Sociology. Should marijuana be legalized?
• Culture. What is cultural pluralism?

🖊️ Good Essay Topics to Boost Your Creativity

Here are another ten essay topics to practice in university – working with such texts is a pleasure. They are perfect for sharpening your imaginative thinking and persuasive skills, and they are captivating enough to discuss with friends or relatives. Let’s go!

• The games people play and the masks they wear: Sincerity versus politeness.
• Is it ethical to advertise products to children?
• Is it acceptable to use white lies in advertisements?
• Environmental pollution is a global problem. Should everyone make a small contribution to the struggle against it?
• Is one volunteer really worth ten pressed men? How can motivation improve outcomes?
• What do you think of “Calvin Klein”? Is fashion more important than individuality?
• Is there a problem of a generation gap in modern families?
• Should children follow in their parent’s footsteps?
• Zoos claim to contribute to the conservation of species. Can a zoo be a better habitat for a giraffe than a savanna?
• Should people keep pets? Do companion animals feel comfortable in homes?

👻 Fun Essay Topics

Sometimes you might like to write just for your own pleasure or to share some fun facts with your classmates. We’re here to help with ideas! Have a look at these fun essay topics.

• Why do the worst students often become famous and successful? 
• The perfect plan to lose all friends. 
• What would happen if animals ruled the world? 
• What are animals thinking about? 
• How to ask people for money?
• Why do all elderly people need to attend computer courses? 
• Why should parents sign contracts with their children?
• Why is it a good idea to refuse to count the time?
• How to stop procrastinating? 
• How to win the lottery?

Fun Essay Topics for Middle School

Are you looking for some fun essay ideas to spark your creativity? Check out our list of exciting essay topics for middle school students.

• If I could have a superpower, it would be…
• My favorite fictional character and why I admire them.
• The best video game I’ve ever played.
• If I were a time traveler, I would visit…
• A new holiday: what would it celebrate?
• Designing my own theme park: attractions and rides.
• My ideal school: what would it look like?
• The day I discovered a hidden treasure.
• A guide on how to train a dragon.
• My favorite mythical creature and its adventures.
• My own comic book: characters and plot.
• The best book I’ve ever read and why it’s my favorite.
• If animals could speak, what would they say?
• If I were the mayor of a magical town.
• A day in the life of a time-traveling explorer.

Fun Essay Topics for High School

Look no further if you’re searching for some engaging and lighthearted inspiration for your essay! To help you craft an outstanding paper, we’ve collected fun topics to write about for an essay.

• The influence of superhero movies on modern culture.
• The psychology of nostalgia and its influence on consumer trends.
• The psychology of humor and its effects on human interaction.
• The art of storytelling: from ancient myths to modern narratives.
• The world of cosplay: creativity, craftsmanship, and community.
• The magic of sports: teamwork, rivalry, and personal growth.
• The evolution of online memes and their social impact.
• The role of fantasy literature in shaping our imaginations.
• The art of street photography and its reflection of urban life.
• The rise of DIY culture and its impact on creativity and self-expression.
• The joy of exploring diverse cuisines and culinary traditions.
• The art of self-expression through slam poetry and spoken word.
• Road trips and the freedom of open exploration.
• Decoding the art of special effects in movies.
• Vintage fashion and its resurgence in modern style.

Fun Essay Topics for College Students

Wondering what topic to choose for your next writing assignment? Check out these fun topics for essays that will spark your creativity and engage your readers.

• The psychology of decision-making in a complex, interconnected world.
• The key skills for thriving in an ever-changing job market.
• The evolution of language in the digital age: memes, emojis, and new forms of communication.
• The chemistry and creativity of cocktails.
• The power of art therapy in promoting mental wellness and self-expression.
• How virtual communities shape individual identities and personal growth.
• The connection between music and memory: how sound shapes our experiences.
• The impact of street art on urban culture and the public sphere.
• The world of eSports: competitive gaming, community, and professional leagues.
• Virtual reality and modern entertainment experience.
• The future of work: remote teams and flexible schedules.
• The psychology of superstitions and their role in decision-making.
• The impact of AI on music composition.
• The science of sleep: sleep disorders, circadian rhythms, and optimizing rest.
• Selfies in the digital age and the evolution of self-representation.

Things to Write an Essay About for Fun

Essay writing can be an enjoyable experience when you have the right topic to explore. Let’s dive into our list of intriguing ideas on what to write an essay about for fun!

• Music . You can write about your favorite genre, a specific musician or band, the impact of music on society, or the emotional and psychological effects of music.
• Fantastic literature . You can explore the themes and motifs in fantasy or science fiction literature, analyze a specific book or series, or discuss the role of fantastic literature in shaping culture and imagination.
• Childhood memories . You can write about a specific memory from your childhood, reflect on how your childhood experiences have shaped you, or explore the importance of preserving childhood memories.
• Traveling . You can write about a memorable travel experience, discuss the impact of travel on personal growth and cultural understanding, or provide tips and advice for fellow travelers.
• Cooking . You can share your favorite recipes, discuss the cultural significance of certain dishes, or explore the therapeutic and creative aspects of cooking.
• Memes and internet slang . You can analyze the evolution and impact of internet memes and slang, discuss their role in shaping digital communication, or explore the humor and social commentary embedded in internet culture.
• Conspiracy theories . You can examine the psychology behind conspiracy theories, debunk common misconceptions, or analyze the societal implications of widespread belief in conspiracy theories.
• Pets . You can share heartwarming stories about your pets, discuss the benefits of pet ownership, or explore the bond between humans and animals.
• Anime and cosplay . You can review a specific anime series or movie, discuss the cultural influence of anime, or explore the creativity and community of cosplay.
• Board or video games . You can review a specific game, discuss the impact of gaming on society and individuals, or explore the art and design elements of games.

💭 Thought-provoking Essay Topics

If you still don’t know what essay topics to write about, check out this thought-provoking list – there are many ideas to consider and choose from. Plus, this set of questions is not only perfect for essays; they also make interesting speech topics to discuss with your audience.

• Errors in any sphere are unavoidable. Do doctors, judges, and teachers have the right to make mistakes ?
• Leaders are born, and managers are made?
• How can capital punishment be acceptable if judges’ errors are inevitable?
• What is effective risk management in an organization?
• Emotional Intelligence role in successful leadership.
• Why use stick and carrot motivation? Wouldn’t sticking to policies be enough?
• What team efficiency depends on?
• Digital marketing challenges in organizations.
• It is said that women are from Venus, and men are from Mars. Are men and women really that different?
• How can the Federal Reserve affect prices?
• Social media influences on marketing: Current trends.
• Can women be regarded as the weaker sex today?
• How can Emotional Intelligence be used in leadership?
• What is consumer behavior’s role in global business?
• Modern theater and remakes of classic plays – new interpretation or outrage?
• International business: Do cultural differences matter?
• Is Graffiti Art or Vandalism?
• Can the way to success be laziness?
• Human resource management: How does it look in the modern world?
• Does an artist need the talent to create abstract pictures?
• Team building: Does it make sense?
• What does a human resource manager do?
• Live to eat or eat to live? Healthy diets versus favorite dishes.
• How leadership’s role has evolved in the 21st century?
• What is bad customer service?
• Apple’s management and leadership development.

➕ Other Interesting Essay Topics

Interesting essay topics for an argumentative paper.

Argumentative essays require a decent number of arguments. Choosing the right topic is essential. Even though any paper is purely individual, there are still specific rules to follow. Otherwise, an article may not have any scientific power.

More than that, the author will have to prove their arguments constantly. Also, there will be discussions of specific facts with other people who might disagree with what’s written.

Thus, any simple argumentative essay should have the specific features of this type of work to achieve as much effectiveness as possible. Here is a list of topics you can choose for your argumentative paper:

• Patients in the hospital need better care. This essay will describe the problems of modern nursing care.
• The search for oil is one of the priorities today. This persuasive research paper is associated with the problem of oil search and striving for leadership.
• The credibility of data in the media is questionable. The theme is connected with the problem of understatement or lies in the media.
• Nobody wants to deal with obsessive sellers. An argumentative and persuasive essay on this topic should describe the best methods to sell goods and not to annoy potential buyers.
• Deviant behavior is a consequence but not a cause. An argumentative essay format of this topic implies revealing the problems that can lead to the occurrence of deviant behavior in adolescents and adults.
• The more you take sports, the better it is. Argumentative essay subjects, in this case, should relate to sport and reveal the advantages of a healthy lifestyle and regular sports activities.
• Consultations with colleagues at work can increase the level of trust in the team. When writing a good argumentative essay on this topic, you can try to reveal the connection between interaction and good relations.
• People who cannot communicate with others feel depressed. The problem of the lack of communication and the consequences that can arise are described in such an article.
• Excessive passion for video games affects mental health. You can write an argumentative essay or persuasive essay; the topic will reveal the danger that great affection for video games brings.
• Personal experience is useful in the process of getting an education. When it is an argumentative research essay on such a theme, the benefits of personal experience and knowledge should be discussed to persuade your readers of the necessity of self-study.
• Other authors’ works can be helpful when writing scientific papers. The advantages of citing respected authors’ thoughts will be described in such persuasive essay papers.
• Industrial spheres prevail over others. In this paper, you will present your opinion concerning the distribution of industrial enterprises on the planet.
• Territories of wildlife are increasing. To write an excellent argumentative essay on this topic, you should give specific statistical data to demonstrate your knowledge of environmental pollution and information concerning human activity.
• Swimming is one of the healthiest hobbies. Try to reveal the benefits of swimming for human health.
• Teaching is the profession of patient people. The paper aims to disclose teachers’ features of character and their positive traits.

Random essay Topics

An argumentative research paper is not the only format for university work. Authors write articles on different themes, using a variety of techniques and methods to achieve specific goals.

In the process of disclosing a particular topic, it is not always possible to use the same methods. For example, sometimes, you need to compare two or more phenomena or concepts. And sometimes, you have to consider specific points critically.

If you want to learn more about different types of essays in college, we recommend you consider the following tips . They will help you learn creative writing and make your texts unique and exciting for readers. We recommend the following topics:

• Compare and contrast the issues of successful and unhappy marriages. A comparative essay is often used when considering specific issues related to sociology, and this topic is one of them. This type of work is sometimes called a discursive essay.
• The consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Just as in a compare-contrast essay, several research objects can be used here. A cause-effect piece on this theme is a comprehensive study of factors that arise for reason of a famous disaster that happened in 1986.
• All the world’s religions are similar. The topic should present the similarity of various religious concepts. Here, argumentative issues are used, and excellent argumentative essays imply adequate author’s criticism based on verified confirmations.
• Animal species in Australia: A great variety of the local fauna. A descriptive essay on this topic gives a detailed description of the reasons why there are so many unique animal species on this continent and includes listing some of them. Such essay subjects must be relevant only to the nature of Australia.
• Possible factors that influence the effectiveness of employees’ work. It can be an exploratory essay that is different from many other types of articles. Its essence is a continuous study of all the possible phenomena that influence people’s results rather than an assessment or criticism of particular nuances. This type of work is not similar to a persuasive research paper where a specific point of view is proved. On the contrary, the author seeks to find the most accurate results on a given topic.
• The evaluation of the effectiveness of electronic control systems at industrial enterprises. This topic implies another approach in comparison with an argumentative essay paper; there is no need to give clear arguments, just a personal opinion.
• The great Shakespeare’s masterpiece. This literature essay aims at studying a particular text and the author’s assessment of the events described in his famous plays.
• The leadership of the enterprise should be involved in working on increasing productivity. A perfect argumentative essay will contain arguments in favor of the leadership that is actively involved in the affairs of a specific company and is bothered by its successes.
• The implementation of electronic resources for the preparation of students. This topic implies an admission essay that, as a rule, is used as an official document in universities and colleges. The essence of such a paper is to assess an applicant’s abilities.
• Financial indicators of the success of specific business strategies. This theme is associated with a persuasive paper that is also called argumentative. This type of writing has much in common with an expository essay, where you also need to provide statistics or accurate data to confirm a particular point of view.

Critical Essay Topics

Here is another list for you. 10 best critical essay topics! Get inspired!

• Crimes and governmental influence.
• Corporate social responsibility: Business benefits.
• The growth of the tech industry and environmental issues associated with it.
• What is the right balance between open and closed innovation?
• Homelessness in the UK: Is it a big issue?
• Innovation influences the business environment.
• Is it possible to influence climate change?
• Canadian small businesses in public perception.
• Reasons for food allergy development.
• Consumer behavior and international marketing.

Animal Persuasive Essay Topics

To write an excellent argumentative essay and fully reveal the stated issue, it is worthwhile to guide specific rules for writing this type of work.

However, it is significant to use credible sources and reliable arguments and choose a theme that will be interesting to readers. You can use one of the following topics about animals:

• Governments should protect animal rights .
• Animal testing should be banned.
• Zoos can be good for animals.
• It should not be allowed to use animals for entertainment.
• It should be forbidden to have exotic pets.
• Using animals for fashion purposes is inhumane.
• Hunting for entertainment should not be allowed.
• Governments should strictly control factory farm conditions.
• Cruelty towards animals should be legally punished.
• Endangered species should be better protected.

Cool Essay Topics: Nursing

Another excellent list for you! If you want to focus on nursing, go through these cool essay topics!

• Ethical questions in healthcare management.
• Should euthanasia be allowed?
• What is assisted suicide ?
• Medical ethics in the workplace.
• Medication error disclosure in South Carolina.
• What are nursing leaders for?
• The issue of racism in healthcare leadership.
• Moral dilemmas in nursing.
• The importance of pain management in nursing.
• Healthcare collaboration for patient quality care.
• Medication errors in nursing practice.
• Electronic clinical decision support tools for nurses.
• Importance of theory in nursing.
• The problem of obesity in childhood.
• Racial and cultural inequalities in health.

✍️ Interesting Proposal Essay Topics

In case you have a task to write a proposal essay, get inspired by this list! We’ve picked the most interesting proposal essay topics for you!

• Why are foreign languages important in school education?
• Should the sale of drugs be strictly controlled?
• How should children be taught manners?
• What is the best way to tell children about the dangers of our world?
• What can be done to protect animals from human cruelty?
• How to solve the water pollution problem?
• How can cyberbullying be reduced?
• What is the best way to reduce smoking among teenagers?
• What can be done to lower corruption in sports?
• What can be done against fake news?

✔️ Interesting Topics for Essays: Possible Mistakes

You can write a creative essay without using a large number of sources. Nevertheless, when writing an English argumentative essay or an article in any other language, it is essential to avoid typical mistakes that inexperienced authors often make.

Moreover, to write compelling essays, some people choose somewhat tricky topics that can become the cause of problems:

• The evaluation of the development of an accounting department next year. Such an analytical essay can be full of unnecessary information, which hardly conveys the general essence of the article and can be easily excluded from the text without the loss of sense.
• The comparison of the country’s total gross product over the past decade. It is quite a problematic theme that requires specific knowledge in the sphere of economics. Persuasive essay writers sometimes choose too complex topics. It is essential to know how to reveal this or that issue and to find reliable sources of information.
• The events of the American Civil War in chronological order. Great persuasive essays like this one can be appreciated only if the data used in them is accurate; in such a paper, you should give correct information and not miss any significant point to give your readers the most useful data.
• The development of baseball and the formation of the game rules. This topic aims at describing the history of baseball development, but it is likely to have a limited number of readers. Argumentative subjects should be close to the target audience; otherwise, the theme will be uninteresting.
• The development of printing in pictures and tables. Such a topic means that you will have to use many graphic elements. The format for an argumentative essay should not differ from generally accepted standards.
• The opinions of famous philosophers about the upbringing of children. If it is an excellent discursive essay, it should have an appropriate number of quotes cited appropriately. Without them, the argumentative paper will look too weak, and you will be blamed for the lack of identical pieces of evidence.
• The peculiarities of English literature in the 17-19th centuries. This theme is directly connected with literature, and any English persuasive essay should be relevant and competently written. Any grammatical, punctuation, or other errors are inadmissible; otherwise, the argumentative article will be considered unsuccessful and will not be able to comply with the rules of writing.
• Five great thoughts regarding the unacceptability of racism. An excellent persuasive essay on this topic will discuss outstanding people’s opinions about a stated problem and, at the same time, will be completely free from plagiarism. In no case can you use other people’s thoughts and texts without first quoting them in the text.
• Difficulties of various professions: the experience of different people. This topic means that you will have to use some opinions of different respondents to convey the general idea of such a paper fully. In the process of writing an argumentative essay, help can be provided by colleagues or other authors. Remember: great argumentative essays contain your arguments supported by evidence; otherwise, your work will be considered to be false.
• A comparative study of the sources confirming the need to introduce electronic knowledge assessment systems. This theme will be connected with the review of various articles and online resources to compare authors’ results and give a specific conclusion. It will be useful to pay attention to electronic libraries and other services where various scientific articles and other works of respected scientists are collected. If you do not do it, your paper can have insufficiently relevant arguments.

We hope that our article helps you to start your own paper! Now you have more than 100 interesting essay topic ideas. So, it’s time to choose one and write a brilliant paper. Good luck!

• The Basics of Essay Writing – UNSW
• Write Your Essay – UNSW
• Writing an Essay – Monash University
• Expository Essays – Purdue University
• Essay Writing – Deakin University
• Components of a Good Essay – Evansville.edu
• Essay Introductions – University of Maryland
• What is an Essay? – Curtin University

i need topics of long essay in English

All these topics can be used for long essays as well 🙂

Before reading this my problem was searching an interesting idea for my assignment but now I’m confused about which one to write about since they are very interesting.I probably will choose -is it better to follow your dream or to investigate the job market when choosing a profession? Since I’m a senior highschool student this topic will be catching and helpful for my classmates.tnx a lot.

That is indeed an interesting topic, Luna! Glad to help.

Or he almost accidentally wins a Darwin award, can’t tell.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

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Are you also learning about dynamic equilibrium in your science class? We break this sometimes tricky concept down so it's easy to understand in our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium .

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25 Elite Common App Essay Examples (And Why They Worked)

Applying to competitive colleges? You'll need to have a stand-out Common App essay.

In this article, I'm going to share with you:

• 25 outstanding Common App essay examples
• Links to tons of personal statement examples
• Why these Common App essays worked

If you're looking for outstanding Common App essay examples, you've found the right place.

If you're applying to colleges in 2023, you're going to write some form of a Common App essay.

Writing a great Common App personal essay is key if you want to maximize your chances of getting admitted.

Whether you're a student working on your Common App essay, or a parent wondering what it takes, this article will help you master the Common App Essay.

What are the Common App Essay Prompts for 2023?

There are seven prompts for the Common App essay. Remember that the prompts are simply to help get you started thinking.

You don't have to answer any of the prompts if you don't want (see prompt #7 ).

Here's the seven Common App essay questions for 2022, which are the same as previous years:

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
• Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
• Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

The last prompt is a catch-all prompt, which means you can submit an essay on any topic you want.

Use the Common App prompts as brainstorming questions and to get you thinking.

But ultimately, you should write about any topic you meaningfully care about.

What makes an outstanding Common App personal essay?

I've read thousands of Common App essays from highly motivated students over the past years.

And if I had to choose the top 2 things that makes for incredible Common App essays it's these:

1. Being Genuine

Sounds simple enough. But it's something that is incredibly rare in admissions.

Authenticity is something we all know when we see it, but can be hard to define.

Instead of focus on what you think sounds the best to admissions officers, focus on what you have to say—what interests you.

2. Having Unique Ideas

The best ideas come about while you're writing.

You can't just sit down and say, "I'll think really hard of good essay ideas."

I wish that worked, but it sadly doesn't. And neither do most brainstorming questions.

The ideas you come up with from these surface-level tactics are cheap, because no effort was put in.

As they say,

"Writing is thinking"

By choosing a general topic (e.g. my leadership experience in choir) and writing on it, you'll naturally come to ideas.

As you write, continue asking yourself questions that make you reflect.

It is more of an artistic process than technical one, so you'll have to feel what ideas are most interesting.

25 Common App Essay Examples from Top Schools

With that, here's 25 examples as Common App essay inspiration to get you started.

These examples aren't perfect—nor should you expect yours to be—but they are stand-out essays.

I've handpicked these examples of personal statements from admitted students because they showcase a variety of topics and writing levels.

These students got into top schools and Ivy League colleges in recent years:

Table of Contents

• 1. Seeds of Immigration
• 2. Color Guard
• 3. Big Eater
• 4. Love for Medicine
• 5. Cultural Confusion
• 6. Football Manager
• 9. Mountaineering
• 10. Boarding School
• 11. My Father
• 12. DMV Trials
• 13. Ice Cream Fridays
• 14. Key to Happiness
• 15. Discovering Passion
• 16. Girl Things
• 17. Robotics
• 18. Lab Research
• 19. Carioca Dance
• 20. Chinese Language
• 21. Kiki's Delivery Service
• 22. Museum of Life
• 23. French Horn
• 24. Dear My Younger Self
• 25. Monopoly

Common App Essay Example #1: Seeds of Immigration

This student was admitted to Dartmouth College . In this Common App essay, they discuss their immigrant family background that motivates them.

Although family is a commonly used topic, this student makes sure to have unique ideas and write in a genuine way.

Common App Prompt #1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. (250-650 words)

I placed three tiny seeds, imagining the corn stalk growing while the pumpkin vines wrapped around it; both sprouting, trying to bear fruit. I clenched a fistful of dirt and placed it on them. “Más,” my grandpa told me as he quickly flooded the seeds with life-giving dirt.

Covered. Completely trapped.

Why This Essay Works:

Everyone has a unique family history and story, and often that can make for a strong central theme of a personal statement. In this essay, the student does a great job of sharing aspects of his family's culture by using specific Spanish words like "yunta" and by describing their unique immigration story. Regardless of your background, sharing your culture and what it means to you can be a powerful tool for reflection.

This student focuses on reflecting on what their culture and immigrant background means to them. By focusing on what something represents, rather than just what it literally is, you can connect to more interesting ideas. This essay uses the metaphor of their family's history as farmers to connect to their own motivation for succeeding in life.

This essay has an overall tone of immense gratitude, by recognizing the hard work that this student's family has put in to afford them certain opportunities. By recognizing the efforts of others in your life—especially efforts which benefit you—you can create a powerful sense of gratitude. Showing gratitude is effective because it implies that you'll take full advantage of future opportunities (such as college) and not take them for granted. This student also demonstrates a mature worldview, by recognizing the difficulty in their family's past and how things easily could have turned out differently for this student.

This essay uses three moments of short, one-sentence long paragraphs. These moments create emphasis and are more impactful because they standalone. In general, paragraph breaks are your friend and you should use them liberally because they help keep the reader engaged. Long, dense paragraphs are easy to gloss over and ideas can lose focus within them. By using a variety of shorter and longer paragraphs (as well as shorter and longer sentences) you can create moments of emphasis and a more interesting structure.

What They Might Improve:

This conclusion is somewhat off-putting because it focuses on "other students" rather than the author themself. By saying it "fills me with pride" for having achieved without the same advantages, it could create the tone of "I'm better than those other students" which is distasteful. In general, avoid putting down others (unless they egregiously deserve it) and even subtle phrasings that imply you're better than others could create a negative tone. Always approach your writing with an attitude of optimism, understanding, and err on the side of positivity.

Common App Essay Example #2: Color Guard

This student was admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . Check out their Common App essay that focuses on an extracurricular:

Sweaty from the hot lights, the feeling of nervousness and excitement return as I take my place on the 30-yard line. For 10 short minutes, everyone is watching me. The first note of the opening song begins, and I’m off. Spinning flags, tossing rifles, and dancing across the football field. Being one of only two people on the colorguard means everyone will see everything. It’s amazing and terrifying. And just like that, the performance is over.

Flashback to almost four years ago, when I walked into the guard room for the first time. I saw flyers for a “dance/flag team” hanging in the bland school hallway, and because I am a dancer, I decided to go. This was not a dance team at all. Spinning flags and being part of the marching band did not sound like how I wanted to spend my free time. After the first day, I considered not going back. But, for some unknown reason, I stayed. And after that, I began to fall in love with color guard. It is such an unknown activity, and maybe that’s part of what captivated me. How could people not know about something so amazing? I learned everything about flags and dancing in that year. And something interesting happened- I noticed my confidence begin to grow. I had never thought I was that good at anything, there was always someone better. However, color guard was something I truly loved, and I was good at it.

The next year, I was thrown into an interesting position. Our current captain quit in the middle of the season, and I was named the new captain of a team of six. At first, this was quite a daunting task. I was only a sophomore, and I was supposed to lead people two years older than me? Someone must’ve really believed in me. Being captain sounded impossible to me at first, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from doing my best. This is where my confidence really shot up. I learned how to be a captain. Of course I was timid at first, but slowly, I began to become a true leader.

The next marching season, it paid off. I choreographed many pieces of our show, and helped teach the other part of my guard, which at the time was only one other person. Having a small guard, we had to be spectacular, especially for band competitions. We ended up winning first place and second place trophies, something that had never been done before at our school, especially for such a small guard. That season is still one of my favorite memories. The grueling hours of learning routines, making changes, and learning how to be a leader finally paid off.

Looking back on it as I exit the field after halftime once again, I am so proud of myself. Not only has color guard helped the band succeed, I’ve also grown. I am now confident in what my skills are. Of course there is always more to be done, but I now I have the confidence to share my ideas, which is something I can’t say I had before color guard. Every Friday night we perform, I think about the growth I’ve made, and I feel on top of the world. That feeling never gets old.

Common App Essay Example #3: Big Eater

This Common App essay is a successful Northwestern essay from an admitted student. It has a unique take using the topic of eating habits—an example of how "mundane" topics can make for interesting ideas.

This essay uses their relationship with food to explore how their perspective has changed through moving high schools far away. Having a central theme is often a good strategy because it allows you to explore ideas while making them feel connected and cohesive. This essay shows how even a "simple" topic like food can show a lot about your character because you can extrapolate what it represents, rather than just what it literally is. With every topic, you can analyze on two levels: what it literally is, and what it represents.

Admissions officers want to get a sense of who you are, and one way to convey that is by using natural-sounding language and being somewhat informal. In this essay, the student writes as they'd speak, which creates a "voice" that you as the reader can easily hear. Phrases like "I kind of got used to it" may be informal, but work to show a sense of character. Referring to their parents as "Ma" and "Papa" also bring the reader into their world. If you come from a non-English speaking country or household, it can also be beneficial to use words from your language, such as "chiemo" in this essay. Using foreign language words helps share your unique culture with admissions.

Rather than "telling" the reader what they have to say, this student does a great job of "showing" them through specific imagery and anecdotes. Using short but descriptive phrases like "whether it was a sum or Sam the bully" are able to capture bigger ideas in a more memorable way. Showing your points through anecdotes and examples is always more effective than simply telling them, because showing allows the reader to come to their own conclusion, rather than having to believe what you're saying.

This student's first language is not English, which does make it challenging to express ideas with the best clarity. Although this student does an overall great job in writing despite this hindrance, there are moments where their ideas are not easily understood. In particular, when discussing substance addiction, it isn't clear: Was the student's relationship with food a disorder, or was that a metaphor? When drafting your essay, focus first on expressing your points as clearly and plainly as possible (it's harder than you may think). Simplicity is often better, but if you'd like, afterwards you can add creative details and stylistic changes.

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Common App Essay Example #4: Love for Medicine

Here's another Common App essay which is an accepted Dartmouth essay . This student talks about their range of experiences as an emergency medical responder:

I never knew I had the courage to talk a suicidal sixteen-year-old boy down from the edge of a bridge, knowing that he could jump and take his life at any moment.

I never knew I had the confidence to stand my ground and defend my treatment plan to those who saw me as less than capable because of my age or gender.

This essay has lots of detailed moments and descriptions. These anecdotes help back up their main idea by showing, rather than just telling. It's always important to include relevant examples because they are the "proof in the pudding" for what you're trying to say.

This topic deals with a lot of sensitive issues, and at certain points the writing could be interpreted as insensitive or not humble. It's especially important when writing about tragedies that you focus on others, rather than yourself. Don't try to play up your accomplishments or role; let them speak for themselves. By doing so, you'll actually achieve what you're trying to do: create an image of an honorable and inspirational person.

This essay touches on a lot of challenging and difficult moments, but it lacks a deep level of reflection upon those moments. When analyzing your essay, ask yourself: what is the deepest idea in it? In this case, there are some interesting ideas (e.g. "when they were on my stretcher, socioeconomic status...fell away"), but they are not fully developed or fleshed out.

Common App Essay Example #5: Cultural Confusion

This student's Common App was accepted to Pomona College , among other schools. Although this essay uses a common topic of discussing cultural background, this student writes a compelling take.

This student uses the theme of cultural confusion to explain their interests and identity:

Common App Essay Example #6: Football Manager

Here's a UPenn essay that worked for the Common App:

This essay has lighthearted moments in it, such as recognizing how being a football manager "does not sound glamorous" and how "we managers go by many names: watergirls..." Using moments of humor can be appropriate for contrasting with moments of serious reflection. Being lighthearted also shows a sense of personality and that you are able to take things with stride.

The reflections in this essay are far too generic overall and ultimately lack meaning because they are unspecific. Using buzzwords like "hard work" and "valuable lessons" comes off as unoriginal, so avoid using them at all costs. Your reflections need to be specific to you to be most meaningful. If you could (in theory) pluck out sentences from your essay and drop them into another student's essay, then chances are those sentences are not very insightful. Your ideas should be only have been able to been written by you: specific to your experiences, personal in nature, and show deep reflection.

Although this essay uses the topic of "being a football manager," by the end of the essay it isn't clear what that role even constitutes. Avoid over-relying on other people or other's ideas when writing your essay. That is, most of the reflections in this essay are based on what the author witnessed the football team doing, rather than what they experienced for themselves in their role. Focus on your own experiences first, and be as specific and tangible as possible when describing your ideas. Rather than saying "hard work," show that hard work through an anecdote.

More important than your stories is the "So what?" behind them. Avoid writing stories that don't have a clear purpose besides "setting the scene." Although most fiction writing describes people and places as exposition, for your essays you want to avoid that unless it specifically contributes to your main point. In this essay, the first two paragraphs are almost entirely unnecessary, as the point of them can be captured in one sentence: "I joined to be a football manager one summer." The details of how that happened aren't necessary because they aren't reflected upon.

In typical academic writing, we're taught to "tell them what you're going to tell them" before telling them. But for college essays, every word is highly valuable. Avoid prefacing your statements and preparing the reader for them. Instead of saying "XYZ would prove to be an unforgettable experience," just dive right into the experience itself. Think of admissions officers as "being in a rush," and give them what they want: your interesting ideas and experiences.

Common App Essay Example #7: Coffee

This student was admitted to several selective colleges, including Emory University, Northwestern University , Tufts University, and the University of Southern California . Here's their Common Application they submitted to these schools:

I was 16 years old, and working at a family-owned coffee shop training other employees to pour latte art. Making coffee became an artistic outlet that I never had before. I always loved math, but once I explored the complexities of coffee, I began to delve into a more creative realm--photography and writing--and exposed myself to the arts--something foreign and intriguing.

This essay uses coffee as a metaphor for this student's self-growth, especially in dealing with the absence of their father. Showing the change of their relationship with coffee works well as a structure because it allows the student to explore various activities and ideas while making them seem connected.

This student does a great job of including specifics, such as coffee terminology ("bloom the grounds" and "pour a swan"). Using specific and "nerdy" language shows your interests effectively. Don't worry if they won't understand all the references exactly, as long as there is context around them.

While coffee is the central topic, the author also references their father extensively throughout. It isn't clear until the conclusion how these topics relate, which makes the essay feel disjointed. In addition, there is no strong main idea, but instead a few different ideas. In general, it is better to focus on one interesting idea and delve deeply, rather than focus on many and be surface-level.

Near the conclusion, this student tells about their character: "humble, yet important, simple, yet complex..." You should avoid describing yourself to admissions officers, as it is less convincing. Instead, use stories, anecdotes, and ideas to demonstrate these qualities. For example, don't say "I'm curious," but show them by asking questions. Don't say, "I'm humble," but show them with how you reacted after a success or failure.

Common App Essay Example #8: Chicago

Here's another Northwestern essay . Northwestern is a quite popular school with lots of strong essay-focused applicants, which makes your "Why Northwestern?" essay important.

To write a strong Why Northwestern essay, try to answer these questions: What does NU represent to you? What does NU offer for you (and your interests) that other schools don't?

This essay uses a variety of descriptive and compelling words, without seeming forced or unnatural. It is important that you use your best vocabulary, but don't go reaching for a thesaurus. Instead, use words that are the most descriptive, while remaining true to how you'd actually write.

This essay is one big metaphor: the "L" train serves as a vehicle to explore this student's intellectual curiosity. Throughout the essay, the student also incorporates creative metaphors like "the belly of a gargantuan silver beast" and "seventy-five cent silver chariot" that show a keen sense of expression. If a metaphor sounds like one you've heard before, you probably shouldn't use it.

This student does a fantastic job of naturally talking about their activities. By connecting their activities to a common theme—in this case the "L" train—you can more easily move from one activity to the next, without seeming like you're just listing activities. This serves as an engaging way of introducing your extracurriculars and achievements, while still having the focus of your essay be on your interesting ideas.

Admissions officers are ultimately trying to get a sense of who you are. This student does a great job of taking the reader into their world. By sharing quirks and colloquialisms (i.e. specific language you use), you can create an authentic sense of personality.

Common App Essay Example #9: Mountaineering

Here's a liberal arts college Common App essay from Colby College . Colby is a highly ranked liberal arts college.

As with all colleges—but especially liberal arts schools—your personal essay will be a considerable factor.

In this essay, the student describes their experience climbing Mount Adams, and the physical and logistical preparations that went into it. They describe how they overcame some initial setbacks by using their organizational skills from previous expeditions.

This Colby student explains how the process of preparation can lead to success in academics and other endeavours, but with the potential for negative unintended consequences.

Common App Prompt #2: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? (250-650 words)

This essay does a great job of having a cohesive theme: mountaineering. Often times, great essay topics can be something simple on the surface, such as your favorite extracurricular activity or a notable experience. Consider using the literal activity as a sort of metaphor, like this essay does. This student uses mountaineering as a metaphor for preparation in the face of upcoming challenge. Using an overarching metaphor along with a central theme can be effective because it allows you to explore various ideas while having them all feel connected and cohesive.

Admissions officers want to see your self-growth, which doesn't always mean your successes. Often times, being vulnerable by expressing your struggles is powerful because it makes you more human and relatable, while providing the opportunity to reflect on what you learned. The best lessons from come failures, and writing about challenge can also make your later successes feel more impactful. Everyone loves to hear an underdog or zero-to-hero story. But counterintuitively, your failures are actually more important than your successes.

This essay has some nice ideas about focusing only on what's in your control: your attitude and your effort. However, these ideas are ultimately somewhat generic as they have been used countless times in admissions essays. Although ideas like this can be a good foundation, you should strive to reach deeper ideas. Deeper ideas are ones that are specific to you, unique, and interesting. You can reach deeper ideas by continually asking yourself "How" and "Why" questions that cause you to think deeper about a topic. Don't be satisfied with surface-level reflections. Think about what they represent more deeply, or how you can connect to other ideas or areas of your life.

Common App Essay Example #10: Boarding School

This personal essay was accepted to Claremont McKenna College . See how this student wrote a vulnerable essay about boarding school experience and their family relationship:

I began attending boarding school aged nine.

Obviously, this is not particularly unusual – my school dorms were comprised of boys and girls in the same position as me. However, for me it was difficult – or perhaps it was for all of us; I don’t know. We certainly never discussed it.

I felt utterly alone, as though my family had abruptly withdrawn the love and support thatI so desperately needed. At first, I did try to open up to them during weekly phone calls, but what could they do? As months slipped by, the number of calls reduced. I felt they had forgotten me. Maybe they felt I had withdrawn from them. A vast chasm of distance was cracking open between us.

At first, I shared my hurt feelings with my peers, who were amazingly supportive, but there was a limit to how much help they could offer. After a while, I realized that by opening up, I was burdening them, perhaps even irritating them. The feelings I was sharing should have been reserved for family. So, I withdrew into myself. I started storing up my emotions and became a man of few words. In the classroom or on the sports field, people saw a self-confident and cheerful character, but behind that facade was someone who yearned for someone to understand him and accept him as he was.

Years went past.

Then came the phone call which was about to change my life. “Just come home Aryan, it’s really important!” My mother’s voice was odd, brittle. I told her I had important exams the following week, so needed to study. “Aryan, why don’t you listen to me? There is no other option, okay? You are coming home.”

Concerned, I arranged to fly home. When I got there, my sister didn’t say hi to me, my grandmother didn’t seem overly enthusiastic to see me and my mother was nowhere to be seen. I wanted to be told why I was called back so suddenly just to be greeted as though I wasn’t even welcome.

Then my mother then came out of her room and saw me. To my immense incredulity, she ran to me and hugged me, and started crying in my arms.

Then came the revelation, “Your father had a heart attack.”

My father. The man I hadn’t really talked to in years. A man who didn’t even know who I was anymore. I’d spent so long being disappointed in him and suspecting he was disappointed in me, I sunk under a flood of emotions.

I opened the door to his room and there he was sitting on his bed with a weak smile on his face. I felt shaken to my core. All at once it was clear to me how self-centered I had become. A feeling of humiliation engulfed me, but finally I realized that rather than wallow in it, I needed to appreciate I was not alone in having feelings.

I remained at home that week. I understood that my family needed me. I worked with my uncle to ensure my family business was running smoothly and often invited relatives or friends over to cheer my father up.

Most importantly, I spent time with my family. It had been years since I’d last wanted to do this – I had actively built the distance between us – but really, I’d never stopped craving it. Sitting together in the living room, I realized how badly I needed them.

Seeing happiness in my father’s eyes, I felt I was finally being the son he had always needed me to be: A strong, capable young man equipped to take over the family business if need be.

Common App Essay Example #11: My Father

This Cornell University essay is an example of writing about a tragedy, which can be a tricky topic to write about well.

Family and tragedy essays are a commonly used topic, so it can be harder to come up with a unique essay idea using these topics.

Let me know what you think of this essay for Cornell:

My father was wise, reserved, hardworking, and above all, caring. I idolized his humility and pragmatism, and I cherish it today. But after his death, I was emotionally raw. I could barely get through class without staving off a breakdown.

Writing about tragedy, such as the loss of a loved one, is a tricky topic because it has been used countless times in college admissions. It is difficult to not come off as a "victim" or that you're trying to garner sympathy by using the topic (i.e. a "sob story"). This essay does a great job of writing about a personal tragedy in a meaningful and unique way by connecting to values and ideas, rather than staying focused on what literally happened. By connecting tragedy to lessons and takeaways, you can show how—despite the difficulty and sorrow—you have gained something positive from it, however small that may be. Don't write about personal tragedy because you think "you should." As with any topic, only write about it if you have a meaningful point to make.

This essay is effective at making the reader feel the similar emotions as the author does and in bringing the reader into their "world." Even small remarks like noting the the "firsts" without their loved one are powerful because it is relatable and something that is apparent, but not commonly talked about. Using short phrases like "That was it. No goodbye, no I love you..." create emphasis and again a sense of relatability. As the reader, you can vividly imagine how the author must have felt during these moments. The author also uses questions, such as "What did I last say to him?" which showcase their thought process, another powerful way to bring the reader into your world.

Admissions officers are looking for self-growth, which can come in a variety of forms. Showing a new perspective is one way to convey that you've developed over time, learned something new, or gained new understanding or appreciation. In this essay, the student uses the "sticker of a black and white eye" to represent how they viewed their father differently before and after his passing. By using a static, unchanging object like this, and showing how you now view it differently over time, you convey a change in perspective that can make for interesting reflections.

Common App Essay Example #12: DMV Trials

Here's a funny Common App essay from a Northwestern admitted student about getting their driver's license.

This topic has been used before—as many "topics" have—but what's important is having a unique take or idea.

What do you think of this Northwestern essay ?

Breath, Emily, breath. I drive to the exit and face a four-lane roadway. “Turn left,” my passenger says.

On July 29, [Date] , I finally got my license. After the April debacle, I practiced driving almost every week. I learned to stop at stop signs and look both ways before crossing streets, the things I apparently didn’t know how to do during my first two tests. When pulling into the parking lot with the examiner for the last time, a wave of relief washed over me.

This essay does a good job of having a compelling narrative. By setting the scene descriptively, it is easy to follow and makes for a pleasant reading experience. However, avoid excessive storytelling, as it can overshadow your reflections, which are ultimately most important.

This essay has some moments where the author may come off as being overly critical, of either themselves or of others. Although it is okay (and good) to recognize your flaws, you don't want to portray yourself in a negative manner. Avoid being too negative, and instead try to find the positive aspects when possible.

More important than your stories is the answer to "So what?" and why they matter. Avoid writing a personal statement that is entirely story-based, because this leaves little room for reflection and to share your ideas. In this essay, the reflections are delayed to the end and not as developed as they could be.

In this essay, it comes across that failure is negative. Although the conclusion ultimately has a change of perspective in that "failure is inevitable and essential to moving forward," it doesn't address that failure is ultimately a positive thing. Admissions officers want to see failure and your challenges, because overcoming those challenges is what demonstrates personal growth.

Common App Essay Example #13: Ice Cream Fridays

This Columbia essay starts off with a vulnerable moment of running for school president. The student goes on to show their growth through Model UN, using detailed anecdotes and selected moments.

My fascination with geopolitical and economic issues were what kept me committed to MUN. But by the end of sophomore year, the co-presidents were fed up. “Henry, we know how hard you try, but there are only so many spots for each conference...” said one. “You’re wasting space, you should quit,” said the other.

This essay has a compelling story, starting from this author's early struggles with public speaking and developing into their later successes with Model UN. Using a central theme—in this case public speaking—is an effective way of creating a cohesive essay. By having a main idea, you can tie in multiple moments or achievements without them coming across unrelated.

This student talks about their achievements with a humble attitude. To reference your successes, it's equally important to address your failures. By expressing your challenges, it will make your later achievements seem more impactful in contrast. This student also is less "me-focused" and instead is interested in others dealing with the same struggles. By connecting to people in your life, values, or interesting ideas, you can reference your accomplishments without coming off as bragging.

This essay has moments of reflection, such as "math and programming made sense... people didn't". However, most of these ideas are cut short, without going much deeper. When you strike upon a potentially interesting idea, keep going with it. Try to explain the nuances, or broaden your idea to more universal themes. Find what is most interesting about your experience and share that with admissions.

Stories are important, but make sure all your descriptions are critical for the story. In this essay, the author describes things that don't add to the story, such as the appearance of other people or what they were wearing. These ultimately don't relate to their main idea—overcoming public speaking challenges—and instead are distracting.

Common App Essay Example #14: Key to Happiness

Here's a Brown University application essay that does a great job of a broad timeline essay. This student shows the change in their thinking and motivations over a period of time, which makes for an interesting topic.

Let me know what you think of this Brown essay:

Common App Prompt #3: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? (250-650 words)

This student's first language is not English, which provides some insight into why the phrasing may not seem as natural or show as much personality. Admissions officers are holistic in determining who to admit, meaning they take into account many different factors when judging your essays. While this essay may not be the strongest, the applicant probably had other qualities or "hooks" that helped them get accepted, such as awards, activities, unique background, etc. Plus, there is some leniency granted to students who don't speak English as their first language, because writing essays in a foreign language is tough in and of itself.

It's good to be confident in your achievements, but you don't want to come across as boastful or self-assured. In this essay, some of the phrasing such as "when I was the best at everything" seems exaggerated and is off-putting. Instead of boosting your accomplishments, write about them in a way that almost "diminishes" them. Connect your achievements to something bigger than you: an interesting idea, a passionate cause, another person or group. By not inflating your achievements, you'll come across more humble and your achievements will actually seem more impactful. We all have heard of a highly successful person who thinks "it's no big deal," which actually makes their talents seem far more impressive.

This essay has some takeaways and reflections, as your essay should too, but ultimately these ideas are unoriginal and potentially cliché. Ideas like "what makes you happy is pursing your passion" are overused and have been heard thousands of times by admissions officers. Instead, focus on getting to unique and "deep" ideas: ideas that are specific to you and that have meaningful implications. It's okay to start off with more surface-level ideas, but you want to keep asking questions to yourself like "Why" and "How" to push yourself to think deeper. Try making connections, asking what something represents more broadly, or analyzing something from a different perspective.

You don't need to preface your ideas in your essay. Don't say things like "I later found out this would be life-changing, and here's why." Instead, just jump into the details that are most compelling. In this essay, there are moments that seem repetitive and redundant because they don't add new ideas and instead restate what's already been said in different words. When editing your essay, be critical of every sentence (and even words) by asking: Does this add something new to my essay? Does it have a clear, distinct purpose? If the answer is no, you should probably remove that sentence.

Common App Essay Example #15: Discovering Passion

Here's a Johns Hopkins essay that shows how the student had a change in attitude and perspective after taking a summer job at a care facility.

It may seem odd to write about your potential drawbacks or weaknesses—such as having a bad attitude towards something—but it's real and can help demonstrate personal growth.

So tell me your thoughts on this JHU Common App essay:

Common App Prompt #5: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. (250-650 words)

This student uses vulnerability in admitting that they held preconceived notions about the elderly before this experience. The quote introduces these preconceived notions well, while the description of how this student got their job in the care facility is also engaging.

Admission officers love to see your interactions with others. Showing how you interact reveals a lot about your character, and this essay benefits from reflecting upon the student's relationship with a particular elderly individual.

It is good to be descriptive, but only when it supports your expression of ideas. In this essay, the author uses adjectives and adverbs excessively, without introducing new ideas. Your ideas are more important than having a diverse vocabulary, and the realizations in this essay are muddled by rephrasing similar ideas using seemingly "impressive," but ultimately somewhat meaningless, vocabulary.

This essay touches on some interesting ideas, but on multiple occasions these ideas are repeated just in different phrasing. If you have already expressed an idea, don't repeat it unless you're adding something new: a deeper context, a new angle, a broadened application, etc. Ask yourself: what is the purpose of each sentence, and have I expressed it already?

It's true that almost any topic can make for a strong essay, but certain topics are trickier because they make it easy to write about overly used ideas. In this essay, the main idea can be summarized as: "I realized the elderly were worthy humans too." It touches upon more interesting ideas, such as how people can be reduced down to their afflictions rather than their true character, but the main idea is somewhat surface-level.

Common App Essay Example #16: "A Cow Gave Birth"

This Common App essay for the University of Pennsylvania centers on the theme of womanhood. Not only is it well-written, but this essay has interesting and unique ideas that relate to the student's interests.

Common App Essay Example #17: Robotics

This Common App essay was for Washington University in St. Louis .

This student writes about their experience creating and using an engineering notebook to better document their robotics progress. They share the story of how their dedication and perseverance led to winning awards and qualifying for the national championships.

Lastly, they reflect on the importance of following one's passions in life and decision to pursue a business degree instead of a engineering one.

This essay touches on various lessons that they've learned as a result of their experience doing robotics. However, these lessons are ultimately surface-level and generic, such as "I embraced new challenges." Although these could be a starting point for deeper ideas, on their own they come off as unoriginal and overused. Having interesting ideas is what makes an essay the most compelling, and you need to delve deeply into reflection, past the surface-level takeaways. When drafting and brainstorming, keep asking yourself questions like "How" and "Why" to dig deeper. Ask "What does this represent? How does it connect to other things? What does this show about myself/the world/society/etc.?"

Although this essay is focused on "VEX robotics," the details of what that activity involves are not elaborated. Rather than focusing on the surface-level descriptions like "We competed and won," it would be more engaging to delve into the details. What did your robot do? How did you compete? What were the specific challenges in "lacking building materials"? Use visuals and imagery to create a more engaging picture of what you were doing.

The hook and ending sentences of "drifting off to sleep" feel arbitrary and not at all connected to any ideas throughout the essay. Instead, it comes off as a contrived choice to create a "full circle" essay. Although coming full circle is often a good strategy, there should be a specific purpose in doing so. For your intro, try using a short sentence that creates emphasis on something interesting. For the conclusion, try using similar language to the intro, expanding upon your ideas to more universal takeaways, or connecting back to previous ideas with a new nuance.

Common App Essay Example #18: Lab Research

Common app essay example #19: carioca dance.

Having a natural-sounding style of writing can be a great way of conveying personality. This student does a fantastic job of writing as they'd speak, which lets admissions officers create a clear "image" of who you are in their head. By writing naturally and not robotically, you can create a "voice" and add character to your essay.

This student chooses a unique activity, the Carioca drill, as their main topic. By choosing a "theme" like this, it allows you to easily and naturally talk about other activities too, without seeming like you're simply listing activities. This student uses the Carioca as a metaphor for overcoming difficulties and relates it to their other activities and academics—public speaking and their job experience.

Showing a sense of humor can indicate wit, which not only makes you seem more likeable, but also conveys self-awareness. By not always taking yourself 100% seriously, you can be more relatable to the reader. This student acknowledges their struggles in conjunction with using humor ("the drills were not named after me—'Saads'"), which shows a recognition that they have room to improve, while not being overly self-critical.

Common App Essay Example #20: Chinese Language

The list of languages that Lincoln offered startled me. “There’s so many,” I thought, “Latin, Spanish, Chinese, and French.”

As soon as I stepped off the plane, and set my eyes upon the beautiful city of Shanghai, I fell in love. In that moment, I had an epiphany. China was made for me, and I wanted to give it all my first; first job and first apartment.

Using creative metaphors can be an effective way of conveying ideas. In this essay, the metaphor of "Chinese characters...were the names of my best friends" tells a lot about this student's relationship with the language. When coming up with metaphors, a good rule of thumb is: if you've heard it before, don't use it. Only use metaphors that are specific, make sense for what you're trying to say, and are highly unique.

Whenever you "tell" something, you should try and back it up with anecdotes, examples, or experiences. Instead of saying that "I made conversation," this student exemplifies it by listing who they talked to. Showing is always going to be more compelling than telling because it allows the reader to come to the conclusion on their own, which makes them believe it much stronger. Use specific, tangible examples to back up your points and convince the reader of what you're saying.

Although this essay has reflections, they tend to be more surface-level, rather than unique and compelling. Admissions officers have read thousands of application essays and are familiar with most of the ideas students write about. To stand out, you'll need to dive deeper into your ideas. To do this, keep asking yourself questions whenever you have an interesting idea. Ask "Why" and "How" repeatedly until you reach something that is unique, specific to you, and super interesting.

Avoid writing a conclusion that only "sounds nice," but lacks real meaning. Often times, students write conclusions that go full circle, or have an interesting quote, but they still don't connect to the main idea of the essay. Your conclusion should be your strongest, most interesting idea. It should say something new: a new perspective, a new takeaway, a new aspect of your main point. End your essay strongly by staying on topic, but taking your idea one step further to the deepest it can go.

Common App Essay Example #21: Kiki's Delivery Service

Common App Prompt #6: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? (250-650 words)

I spent much of my childhood watching movies. I became absolutely engrossed in many different films, TV shows, and animations. From the movie theatres to the TV, I spent my hours enjoying the beauty of visual media. One place that was special to me was the car. My parents purchased a special screen that could be mounted on the back of the headrest, so that I could watch movies on trips. This benefited both parties, as I was occupied, and they had peace. Looking back, I realize this screen played a crucial role in my childhood. It was an integral part of many journeys. I remember taking a drive to Washington D.C, with my visiting relatives from Poland, and spending my time with my eyes on the screen. I remember packing up my possessions and moving to my current home from Queens, watching my cartoons the whole time. I can comfortably say that watching movies in the car has been an familiar anchor during times of change in my life.

I used to watch many different cartoons, nature documentaries, and other products in the car, yet there has been one movie that I have rewatched constantly. It is called “Kiki’s Delivery Service” by Hayao Miyazaki. My parents picked it up at a garage sale one day, and I fell in love. The style of the animations were beautiful, and the captivating story of a thirteen year old witch leaving home really appealed to me. To be honest, the initial times I watched it, I didn’t fully understand the story but the magic and beauty just made me happy. Then, the more I watched it, I began to see that it was more about independence, including the need to get away from home and establish yourself as your own person. This mirrors how I felt during that period of my life,with mehaving a little rebellious streak; I didn’t agree with my parents on certain topics. That is not the end of the story though. As the years passed, and I watched it a couple more times, although with less frequency than before, my view of this movie evolved yet again.

Instead of solely thinking about the need for independence, I began to think the movie was more about the balance of independence and reliance. In the movie, the girl finds herself struggling until she begins to accept help from others. Looking back, this also follows my own philosophy during this time. As I began to mature, I began to realize the value of family, and accept all the help I can get from them. I appreciate all the hard work they had done for me, and I recognize their experience in life and take advantage of it. I passed through my rebellious phase, and this reflected in my analysis of the movie. I believe that this is common, and if I look through the rest of my life I am sure I would find other similar examples of my thoughts evolving based on the stage in my life. This movie is one of the most important to me throughout my life.

Common App Essay Example #22: Museum of Life

Using visuals can be a way to add interesting moments to your essay. Avoid being overly descriptive, however, as it can be distracting from your main point. When drafting, start by focusing on your ideas (your reflections and takeaways). Once you have a rough draft, then you can consider ways to incorporate imagery that can add character and flavor to your essay.

Admissions officers are people, just like you, and therefore are drawn to personalities that exhibit positive qualities. Some of the most important qualities to portray are: humility, curiosity, thoughtfulness, and passion. In this essay, there are several moments that could be interpreted as potentially self-centered or arrogant. Avoid trying to make yourself out to be "better" or "greater" than other people. Instead, focus on having unique and interesting ideas first, and this will show you as a likeable, insightful person. Although this is a "personal" statement, you should also avoid over using "I" in your essay. When you have lots of "I" sentences, it starts to feel somewhat ego-centric, rather than humble and interested in something greater than you.

This essay does a lot of "telling" about the author's character. Instead, you want to provide evidence—through examples, anecdotes, and moments—that allow the reader to come to their own conclusions about who you are. Avoid surface-level takeaways like "I am open-minded and have a thirst for knowledge." These types of statements are meaningless because anyone can write them. Instead, focus on backing up your points by "showing," and then reflect genuinely and deeply on those topics.

This essay is focused on art museums and tries to tie in a connection to studying medicine. However, because this connection is very brief and not elaborated, the connection seems weak. To connect to your area of study when writing about a different topic, try reflecting on your topic first. Go deep into interesting ideas by asking "How" and "Why" questions. Then, take those ideas and broaden them. Think of ways they could differ or parallel your desired area of study. The best connections between a topic (such as an extracurricular) and your area of study (i.e. your major) is through having interesting ideas.

Common App Essay Example #23: French Horn

This student chose the creative idea of personifying their French horn as their central theme. Using this personification, they are able to write about a multitude of moments while making them all feel connected. This unique approach also makes for a more engaging essay, as it is not overly straightforward and generic.

It can be challenging to reference your achievements without seeming boastful or coming across too plainly. This student manages to write about their successes ("acceptance into the Julliard Pre-College program") by using them as moments part of a broader story. The focus isn't necessarily on the accomplishments themselves, but the role they play in this relationship with their instrument. By connecting more subtly like this, it shows humility. Often, "diminishing" your achievements will actually make them stand out more, because it shows you're focused on the greater meaning behind them, rather than just "what you did."

This student does a good job of exemplifying each of their ideas. Rather than just saying "I experienced failure," they show it through imagery ("dried lips, cracked notes, and missed entrances"). Similarly, with their idea "no success comes without sacrifice," they exemplify it using examples of sacrifice. Always try to back up your points using examples, because showing is much more convincing than telling. Anyone can "tell" things, but showing requires proof.

This essay has a decent conclusion, but it could be stronger by adding nuance to their main idea or connecting to the beginning with a new perspective. Rather than repeating what you've established previously, make sure your conclusion has a different "angle" or new aspect. This can be connecting your main idea to more universal values, showing how you now view something differently, or emphasizing a particular aspect of your main idea that was earlier introduced.

Common App Essay Example #24: Dear My Younger Self

Common App Prompt #7: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design. (250-650 words)

Younger Anna,

• Don’t live your life as if you're constantly being watched and criticized. Chances are, no one is even paying attention to you.
• Wear your retainer.
• Empathy makes your life easier. People who are inexplicably cruel are suffering just as much as the recipients of their abuse. Understanding this makes your interactions with these people less painful.
• Comparing yourself to your classmates is counterproductive. Sometimes you will forge ahead, other times you will lag behind. But ultimately, you’re only racing yourself.
• Speak up to your stepmom.
• Always eat the cake. I couldn't tell you how many times I’ve turned away a slice of cake, only to regret it the next day. If you really can’t commit, do yourself a favor and take a slice home with you.
• Cherish your grandparents.
• Forgive your mother. Harboring resentment hurts you just as much as her. All the time I spent being angry at her could’ve been spent discovering her strengths.

This essay chose a unique structure in the form of a letter addressed to themselves with a list of lessons they've learned. This structure is unique, and also allows the student to explore a variety of topics and ideas while making them all feel connected. It is tricky to not seem "gimmicky" when choosing a creative structure like this, but the key is to make your essay well thought-out. Show that you've put effort into reflecting deeply, and that you aren't choosing a unique structure just to stand out.

This essay is highly focused on lessons they've learned, which shows a deep level of reflection. Your ideas and takeaways from life experience are ultimately most compelling to admissions officers, and this essay succeeds because it is focused almost entirely on those reflections. This student also manages to incorporate anecdotes and mini stories where appropriate, which makes their reflections more memorable by being tangible.

Showing humility and self-awareness are two highly attractive traits in college admissions. Being able to recognize your own flaws and strengths, while not making yourself out to be more than what you are, shows that you are mature and thoughtful. Avoid trying to "boost yourself up" by exaggerating your accomplishments or over-emphasizing your strengths. Instead, let your ideas speak for themselves, and by focusing on genuine, meaningful ideas, you'll convey a persona that is both humble and insightful.

The drawback of having a structure like this, where lots of different ideas are examined, is that no one idea is examined in-depth. As a result, some ideas (such as "intelligence is not defined by your grades") come across as trite and overused. In general, avoid touching on lots of ideas while being surface-level. Instead, it's almost always better to choose a handful (or even just one main idea) and go as in-depth as possible by continually asking probing questions—"How" and "Why"—that force yourself to think deeper and be more critical. Having depth of ideas shows inquisitiveness, thoughtfulness, and ultimately are more interesting because they are ideas that only you could have written.

Common App Essay Example #25: Monopoly

Feeling a bit weary from my last roll of the dice, I cross my fingers with the “FREE PARKING” square in sight. As luck has it, I smoothly glide past the hotels to have my best horse show yet- earning multiple wins against stiff competition and gaining points to qualify for five different national finals this year.

This essay uses the board game "Monopoly" as a metaphor for their life. By using a metaphor as your main topic, you can connect to different ideas and activities in a cohesive way. However, make sure the metaphor isn't chosen arbitrarily. In this essay, it isn't completely clear why Monopoly is an apt metaphor for their life, because the specific qualities that make Monopoly unique aren't explained or elaborated. Lots of games require "strategy and precision, with a hint of luck and a tremendous amount of challenge," so it'd be better to focus on the unique aspects of the game to make a more clear connection. For example, moving around the board in a "repetitive" fashion, but each time you go around with a different perspective. When choosing a metaphor, first make sure that it is fitting for what you're trying to describe.

You want to avoid listing your activities or referencing them without a clear connection to something greater. Since you have an activities list already, referencing your activities in your essay should have a specific purpose, rather than just emphasizing your achievements. In this essay, the student connects their activities by connecting them to a specific idea: how each activity is like a mini challenge that they must encounter to progress in life. Make sure your activities connect to something specifically: an idea, a value, an aspect of your character.

This essay lacks depth in their reflections by not delving deeply into their main takeaways. In this essay, the main "idea" is that they've learned to be persistent with whatever comes their way. This idea could be a good starting point, but on its own is too generic and not unique enough. Your idea should be deep and specific, meaning that it should be something only you could have written about. If your takeaway could be used in another student's essay without much modification, chances are it is a surface-level takeaway and you want to go more in-depth. To go in-depth, keep asking probing questions like "How" and "Why" or try making more abstract connections between topics.

In the final two paragraphs, this essay does a lot of "telling" about the lessons they've learned. They write "I know that in moments of doubt...I can rise to the occasion." Although this could be interesting, it would be far more effective if this idea is shown through anecdotes or experiences. The previous examples in the essay don't "show" this idea. When drafting, take your ideas and think of ways you can represent them without having to state them outright. By showing your points, you will create a more engaging and convincing essay because you'll allow the reader to come to the conclusion themselves, rather than having to believe what you've told them.

What Can You Learn from These Common App Essay Examples?

With these 25 Common App essay examples, you can get inspired and improve your own personal statement.

If you want to get accepted into selective colleges this year, your Common App essays needs to be its best possible.

What makes a good Common App essay isn't easy to define. There aren't any rules or steps.

But using these samples from real students, you can understand what it takes to write an outstanding personal statement .

Let me know, which Common App essay did you think was the best?

Ryan Chiang , Founder of EssaysThatWorked

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Princeton Admitted Essay

People love to ask why. Why do you wear a turban? Why do you have long hair? Why are you playing a guitar with only 3 strings and watching TV at 3 A.M.—where did you get that cat? Why won’t you go back to your country, you terrorist? My answer is... uncomfortable. Many truths of the world are uncomfortable...

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Her baking is not confined to an amalgamation of sugar, butter, and flour. It's an outstretched hand, an open invitation, a makeshift bridge thrown across the divides of age and culture. Thanks to Buni, the reason I bake has evolved. What started as stress relief is now a lifeline to my heritage, a language that allows me to communicate with my family in ways my tongue cannot. By rolling dough for saratele and crushing walnuts for cornulete, my baking speaks more fluently to my Romanian heritage than my broken Romanian ever could....

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A cow gave birth and I watched. Staring from the window of our stopped car, I experienced two beginnings that day: the small bovine life and my future. Both emerged when I was only 10 years old and cruising along the twisting roads of rural Maryland...

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Essay Topics – List of 500+ Essay Writing Topics and Ideas

List of 500+ essay writing topics and ideas.

Essay topics in English can be difficult to come up with. While writing essays , many college and high school students face writer’s block and have a hard time to think about topics and ideas for an essay. In this article, we will list out many good essay topics from different categories like argumentative essays, essays on technology, environment essays for students from 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th grades. Following list of essay topics are for all – from kids to college students. We have the largest collection of essays. An essay is nothing but a piece of content which is written from the perception of writer or author. Essays are similar to a story, pamphlet, thesis, etc. The best thing about Essay is you can use any type of language – formal or informal. It can biography, the autobiography of anyone. Following is a great list of 100 essay topics. We will be adding 400 more soon!

But Before that you may wanna read some awesome Essay Writing Tips here .

Get the Huge list of 100+ Speech Topics here

Argumentative Essay Topics

• Should plastic be banned?
• Pollution due to Urbanization
• Education should be free
• Should Students get limited access to the Internet?
• Selling Tobacco should be banned
• Smoking in public places should be banned
• Facebook should be banned
• Students should not be allowed to play PUBG

Essay Topics on Technology

• Wonder Of Science
• Mobile Phone

Essay Topics on Festivals on Events

• Independence Day (15 August)
• Teachers Day
• Summer Vacation
• Children’s Day
• Swachh Bharat Abhiyan
• Janmashtami
• Republic Day

Essay Topics on Education

• Education Essay
• Importance of Education
• Contribution of Technology in Education

Essay Topics on Famous Leaders

• Mahatma Gandhi
• APJ Abdul Kalam
• Jawaharlal Nehru
• Swami Vivekananda
• Mother Teresa
• Rabindranath Tagore
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
• Subhash Chandra Bose
• Abraham Lincoln
• Martin Luther King
• Lal Bahadur Shashtri

Essay Topics on Animals and Birds

• My Favorite Animal

Essays Topics About Yourself

• My Best Friend
• My Favourite Teacher
• My Aim In Life
• My Favourite Game – Badminton
• My Favourite Game – Essay
• My Favourite Book
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• Solar Eclipse 2024

What the World Has Learned From Past Eclipses

C louds scudded over the small volcanic island of Principe, off the western coast of Africa, on the afternoon of May 29, 1919. Arthur Eddington, director of the Cambridge Observatory in the U.K., waited for the Sun to emerge. The remains of a morning thunderstorm could ruin everything.

The island was about to experience the rare and overwhelming sight of a total solar eclipse. For six minutes, the longest eclipse since 1416, the Moon would completely block the face of the Sun, pulling a curtain of darkness over a thin stripe of Earth. Eddington traveled into the eclipse path to try and prove one of the most consequential ideas of his age: Albert Einstein’s new theory of general relativity.

Eddington, a physicist, was one of the few people at the time who understood the theory, which Einstein proposed in 1915. But many other scientists were stymied by the bizarre idea that gravity is not a mutual attraction, but a warping of spacetime. Light itself would be subject to this warping, too. So an eclipse would be the best way to prove whether the theory was true, because with the Sun’s light blocked by the Moon, astronomers would be able to see whether the Sun’s gravity bent the light of distant stars behind it.

Two teams of astronomers boarded ships steaming from Liverpool, England, in March 1919 to watch the eclipse and take the measure of the stars. Eddington and his team went to Principe, and another team led by Frank Dyson of the Greenwich Observatory went to Sobral, Brazil.

Totality, the complete obscuration of the Sun, would be at 2:13 local time in Principe. Moments before the Moon slid in front of the Sun, the clouds finally began breaking up. For a moment, it was totally clear. Eddington and his group hastily captured images of a star cluster found near the Sun that day, called the Hyades, found in the constellation of Taurus. The astronomers were using the best astronomical technology of the time, photographic plates, which are large exposures taken on glass instead of film. Stars appeared on seven of the plates, and solar “prominences,” filaments of gas streaming from the Sun, appeared on others.

Eddington wanted to stay in Principe to measure the Hyades when there was no eclipse, but a ship workers’ strike made him leave early. Later, Eddington and Dyson both compared the glass plates taken during the eclipse to other glass plates captured of the Hyades in a different part of the sky, when there was no eclipse. On the images from Eddington’s and Dyson’s expeditions, the stars were not aligned. The 40-year-old Einstein was right.

“Lights All Askew In the Heavens,” the New York Times proclaimed when the scientific papers were published. The eclipse was the key to the discovery—as so many solar eclipses before and since have illuminated new findings about our universe.

To understand why Eddington and Dyson traveled such distances to watch the eclipse, we need to talk about gravity.

Since at least the days of Isaac Newton, who wrote in 1687, scientists thought gravity was a simple force of mutual attraction. Newton proposed that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe, and that the strength of this attraction is related to the size of the objects and the distances among them. This is mostly true, actually, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

On much larger scales, like among black holes or galaxy clusters, Newtonian gravity falls short. It also can’t accurately account for the movement of large objects that are close together, such as how the orbit of Mercury is affected by its proximity the Sun.

Albert Einstein’s most consequential breakthrough solved these problems. General relativity holds that gravity is not really an invisible force of mutual attraction, but a distortion. Rather than some kind of mutual tug-of-war, large objects like the Sun and other stars respond relative to each other because the space they are in has been altered. Their mass is so great that they bend the fabric of space and time around themselves.

Read More: 10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

This was a weird concept, and many scientists thought Einstein’s ideas and equations were ridiculous. But others thought it sounded reasonable. Einstein and others knew that if the theory was correct, and the fabric of reality is bending around large objects, then light itself would have to follow that bend. The light of a star in the great distance, for instance, would seem to curve around a large object in front of it, nearer to us—like our Sun. But normally, it’s impossible to study stars behind the Sun to measure this effect. Enter an eclipse.

Einstein’s theory gives an equation for how much the Sun’s gravity would displace the images of background stars. Newton’s theory predicts only half that amount of displacement.

Eddington and Dyson measured the Hyades cluster because it contains many stars; the more stars to distort, the better the comparison. Both teams of scientists encountered strange political and natural obstacles in making the discovery, which are chronicled beautifully in the book No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity , by the physicist Daniel Kennefick. But the confirmation of Einstein’s ideas was worth it. Eddington said as much in a letter to his mother: “The one good plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein,” he wrote , “and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.”

The Eddington-Dyson experiments were hardly the first time scientists used eclipses to make profound new discoveries. The idea dates to the beginnings of human civilization.

Careful records of lunar and solar eclipses are one of the greatest legacies of ancient Babylon. Astronomers—or astrologers, really, but the goal was the same—were able to predict both lunar and solar eclipses with impressive accuracy. They worked out what we now call the Saros Cycle, a repeating period of 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours in which eclipses appear to repeat. One Saros cycle is equal to 223 synodic months, which is the time it takes the Moon to return to the same phase as seen from Earth. They also figured out, though may not have understood it completely, the geometry that enables eclipses to happen.

The path we trace around the Sun is called the ecliptic. Our planet’s axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane, which is why we have seasons, and why the other celestial bodies seem to cross the same general path in our sky.

As the Moon goes around Earth, it, too, crosses the plane of the ecliptic twice in a year. The ascending node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic. The descending node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic. When the Moon crosses a node, a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good at predicting when eclipses would occur.

Two and a half millennia later, in 2016, astronomers used these same ancient records to measure the change in the rate at which Earth’s rotation is slowing—which is to say, the amount by which are days are lengthening, over thousands of years.

By the middle of the 19 th century, scientific discoveries came at a frenetic pace, and eclipses powered many of them. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the colors of sunlight during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of an unknown element, indicating a new discovery: Helium, named for the Greek god of the Sun. In another eclipse in 1869, astronomers found convincing evidence of another new element, which they nicknamed coronium—before learning a few decades later that it was not a new element, but highly ionized iron, indicating that the Sun’s atmosphere is exceptionally, bizarrely hot. This oddity led to the prediction, in the 1950s, of a continual outflow that we now call the solar wind.

And during solar eclipses between 1878 and 1908, astronomers searched in vain for a proposed extra planet within the orbit of Mercury. Provisionally named Vulcan, this planet was thought to exist because Newtonian gravity could not fully describe Mercury’s strange orbit. The matter of the innermost planet’s path was settled, finally, in 1915, when Einstein used general relativity equations to explain it.

Many eclipse expeditions were intended to learn something new, or to prove an idea right—or wrong. But many of these discoveries have major practical effects on us. Understanding the Sun, and why its atmosphere gets so hot, can help us predict solar outbursts that could disrupt the power grid and communications satellites. Understanding gravity, at all scales, allows us to know and to navigate the cosmos.

GPS satellites, for instance, provide accurate measurements down to inches on Earth. Relativity equations account for the effects of the Earth’s gravity and the distances between the satellites and their receivers on the ground. Special relativity holds that the clocks on satellites, which experience weaker gravity, seem to run slower than clocks under the stronger force of gravity on Earth. From the point of view of the satellite, Earth clocks seem to run faster. We can use different satellites in different positions, and different ground stations, to accurately triangulate our positions on Earth down to inches. Without those calculations, GPS satellites would be far less precise.

This year, scientists fanned out across North America and in the skies above it will continue the legacy of eclipse science. Scientists from NASA and several universities and other research institutions will study Earth’s atmosphere; the Sun’s atmosphere; the Sun’s magnetic fields; and the Sun’s atmospheric outbursts, called coronal mass ejections.

When you look up at the Sun and Moon on the eclipse , the Moon’s day — or just observe its shadow darkening the ground beneath the clouds, which seems more likely — think about all the discoveries still yet waiting to happen, just behind the shadow of the Moon.

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6 facts about americans and tiktok.

Increasing shares of U.S. adults are turning to the short-form video sharing platform TikTok in general and for news .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand Americans’ use and perceptions of TikTok. The data for this analysis comes from several Center surveys conducted in 2023.

More information about the surveys and their methodologies, including the sample sizes and field dates, can be found at the links in the text.

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. This is the latest analysis in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

This analysis draws from several Pew Research Center reports on Americans’ use of and attitudes about social media, based on surveys conducted in 2023. For more information, read:

Americans’ Social Media Use

How u.s. adults use tiktok.

• Social Media and News Fact Sheet
• Teens, Social Media and Technology 2023

At the same time, some Americans have concerns about the Chinese-owned platform’s approach to data privacy and its potential impact on national security. Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that, if passed in the Senate and signed into law, would restrict TikTok’s ability to operate in the United States.

Here are six key facts about Americans and TikTok, drawn from Pew Research Center surveys.

A third of U.S. adults – including a majority of adults under 30 – use TikTok. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults under 30 (62%) say they use TikTok, compared with 39% of those ages 30 to 49, 24% of those 50 to 64, and 10% of those 65 and older.

In a 2023 Center survey , TikTok stood out from other platforms we asked about for the rapid growth of its user base. Just two years earlier, 21% of U.S. adults used the platform.

A majority of U.S. teens use TikTok. About six-in-ten teens ages 13 to 17 (63%) say they use the platform. More than half of teens (58%) use it daily, including 17% who say they’re on it “almost constantly.”

A higher share of teen girls than teen boys say they use TikTok almost constantly (22% vs. 12%). Hispanic teens also stand out: Around a third (32%) say they’re on TikTok almost constantly, compared with 20% of Black teens and 10% of White teens.

In fall 2023, support for a U.S. TikTok ban had declined. Around four-in-ten Americans (38%) said that they would support the U.S. government banning TikTok, down from 50% in March 2023. A slightly smaller share (27%) said they would oppose a ban, while 35% were not sure. This question was asked before the House of Representatives passed the bill that could ban the app.

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were far more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to support a TikTok ban (50% vs. 29%), but support had declined across both parties since earlier in the year.

Adults under 30 were less likely to support a ban than their older counterparts. About three-in-ten adults under 30 (29%) supported a ban, compared with 36% of those ages 30 to 49, 39% of those ages 50 to 64, and 49% of those ages 65 and older.

In a separate fall 2023 survey, only 18% of U.S. teens said they supported a ban. 

A relatively small share of users produce most of TikTok’s content. About half of U.S. adult TikTok users (52%) have ever posted a video on the platform. In fact, of all the TikTok content posted by American adults, 98% of publicly accessible videos come from the most active 25% of users .

Those who have posted TikTok content are more active on the site overall. These users follow more accounts, have more followers and are more likely to have filled out an account bio.

Although younger U.S. adults are more likely to use TikTok, their posting behaviors don’t look much different from those of older age groups.

About four-in-ten U.S. TikTok users (43%) say they regularly get news there. While news consumption on other social media sites has declined or remained stagnant in recent years, the share of U.S. TikTok users who get news on the site has doubled since 2020, when 22% got news there.

Related: Social Media and News Fact Sheet

TikTok news consumers are especially likely to be:

• Young. The vast majority of U.S. adults who regularly get news on TikTok are under 50: 44% are ages 18 to 29 and 38% are 30 to 49. Just 4% of TikTok news consumers are ages 65 and older.
• Women. A majority of regular TikTok news consumers in the U.S. are women (58%), while 39% are men. These gender differences are similar to those among news consumers on Instagram and Facebook.
• Democrats. Six-in-ten regular news consumers on TikTok are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, while a third are Republicans or GOP leaners.
• Hispanic or Black. Three-in-ten regular TikTok news users in the U.S. are Hispanic, while 19% are Black. Both shares are higher than these groups’ share of the adult population. Around four-in-ten (39%) TikTok news consumers are White, although this group makes up 59% of U.S. adults overall .

A majority of Americans (59%) see TikTok as a major or minor threat to U.S. national security, including 29% who see the app as a major threat. Our May 2023 survey also found that opinions vary across several groups:

• About four-in-ten Republicans (41%) see TikTok as a major threat to national security, compared with 19% of Democrats.
• Older adults are more likely to see TikTok as a major threat: 46% of Americans ages 65 and older say this, compared with 13% of those ages 18 to 29.
• U.S. adults who do not use TikTok are far more likely than TikTok users to believe TikTok is a major threat (36% vs. 9%).

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Teens and social media fact sheet, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

• Share full article

Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify?

The answer involves a remarkable — and lucrative, and ridiculous — scheme to game the way we find music today.

Matt Farley has released thousands of songs with the goal of producing a result to match nearly anything anybody could think to search for. Credit... Chris Buck for The New York Times

Supported by

By Brett Martin

Brett Martin is a contributing writer for the magazine. For this story, he traveled to Massachusetts to meet the writer of the song “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes.”

• Published March 31, 2024 Updated April 1, 2024

I don’t want to make this all about me, but have you heard the song “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes” ?

I guess probably not. On Spotify, “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes” has not yet accumulated enough streams to even register a tally, despite an excessive number of plays in at least one household that I can personally confirm. Even I, the titular Nice Man, didn’t hear the 1 minute 14 second song until last summer, a full 11 years after it was uploaded by an artist credited as Papa Razzi and the Photogs. I like to think this is because of a heroic lack of vanity, though it may just be evidence of very poor search skills.

Listen to this article, read by Eric Jason Martin

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

When I did stumble on “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes,” I naturally assumed it was about a different, more famous Brett Martin: perhaps Brett Martin, the left-handed reliever who until recently played for the Texas Rangers; or Brett Martin, the legendary Australian squash player; or even Clara Brett Martin, the Canadian who in 1897 became the British Empire’s first female lawyer. Only when the singer began referencing details of stories that I made for public radio’s “This American Life” almost 20 years ago did I realize it actually was about me. The song ended, “I really like you/Will you be my friend?/Will you call me on the phone?” Then it gave a phone number, with a New Hampshire area code.

So, I called.

It’s possible that I dialed with outsize expectations. The author of this song, whoever he was, had been waiting 11 long years as his message in a bottle bobbed on the digital seas. Now, at long last, here I was! I spent serious time thinking about how to open the conversation, settling on what I imagined was something simple but iconic, on the order of “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” After one ring, a male voice answered.

I said: “This is Brett Martin. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to call.”

The man had no idea who I was.

“You have to understand,” he said, apologetically. “I’ve written over 24,000 songs. I wrote 50 songs yesterday.”

And thus was I ushered into the strange universe of Matt Farley.

Farley is 45 and lives with his wife, two sons and a cockapoo named Pippi in Danvers, Mass., on the North Shore. For the past 20 years, he has been releasing album after album of songs with the object of producing a result to match nearly anything anybody could think to search for. These include hundreds of songs name-checking celebrities from the very famous to the much less so. He doesn’t give out his phone number in all of them, but he does spread it around enough that he gets several calls or texts a week. Perhaps sensing my deflation, he assured me that very few came from the actual subject of a song. He told me the director Dennis Dugan (of “Dennis Dugan, I Like Your Movies Very A Lot,” part of an 83-song album about movie directors) called once, but he didn’t realize who it was until too late, and the conversation was awkward.

Freed from the blinding incandescence of my own name, I could suddenly see the extent of what I had stumbled into. It was like the scene in a thriller when the detective first gazes on the wall of a serial killer’s lair. Papa Razzi and the Photogs is only one of about 80 pseudonyms Farley uses to release his music. As the Hungry Food Band, he sings songs about foods. As the Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns, he sings the atlas. He has 600 songs inviting different-named girls to the prom and 500 that are marriage proposals. He has an album of very specific apologies; albums devoted to sports teams in every city that has a sports team; hundreds of songs about animals, and jobs, and weather, and furniture, and one band that is simply called the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over.

He also has many, many songs about going to the bathroom. If you have a child under 10 with access to the internet, it is very likely you know some part of this body of work. What he refers to collectively as his “poop songs” are mostly released under two names: the Toilet Bowl Cleaners and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee.

“The Odd Man is more shameless,” he explained. “The Toilet Bowl Cleaners are making statements with their albums,” though the distinction between the former’s “Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks!” and the latter’s “I Need a Lot of Toilet Paper to Clean the Poop in My Butt” may be subtler than he imagines.

Largely, though not entirely, on the strength of such songs, Farley has managed to achieve that most elusive of goals: a decent living creating music. In 2008, his search-engine optimization project took in $3,000; four years later, it had grown to $24,000. The introduction of Alexa and her voice-activated sistren opened up the theretofore underserved nontyping market, in particular the kind fond of shouting things like “Poop in my fingernails!” at the computer. “Poop in My Fingernails,” by the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, currently has over 4.4 million streams on Spotify alone. To date, that “band,” and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee, have collectively brought in approximately $469,000 from various platforms. They are by far Farley’s biggest earners, but not the only ones: Papa Razzi and the Photogs has earned $41,000; the Best Birthday Song Band Ever, $38,000; the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over, $80,000. Dozens of others have taken in two, three or four digits: the New Orleans Sports Band, the Chicago Sports Band, the Singing Film Critic, the Great Weather Song Person, the Paranormal Song Warrior, the Motern Media Holiday Singers, who perform 70 versions of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” substituting contemporary foods for figgy pudding. It adds up. Farley quit his day job in 2017.

“People like to criticize the whole streaming thing, but there’s really a lot of pros to it,” he said. Indeed, in 2023, his music earned him just shy of $200,000, about one halfpenny at a time.

‘If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop. You just do it and do it and do it, and you sort it out later.’

Farley’s earnings help fund his multiple other creative endeavors. He records what he calls his “no jokes” music. This includes a two-man band he’s been in since college called Moes Haven, which once recorded an album a day for a year. He hosts two podcasts, one about his work and the other recapping Celtics games. And he makes movies: microbudgeted, determinedly amateur but nevertheless recognizably cinematic features starring himself and his family and friends. (They feature a spectacular array of New England accents.) In most, Farley plays some version of himself, a mild-mannered, eccentric hero projecting varying degrees of menace. Farley and his college friend Charlie Roxburgh are in the midst of a project in which they have resolved to release two full movies per year. The model, Farley said, was inspired by Hallmark Movies: “If this movie stinks, good news, we’re making another in six months!” Their most popular work remains “Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You!” (2012), a charmingly shaggy tale of a cryptid threatening a small New England town. It features Farley’s father as a big-game hunter named Ito Hootkins.

Like many of Farley’s endeavors, his films have attracted a small but intense following. “I could fill a 5,000-seat arena, if I could only get everybody in one place,” he says. His is the kind of obsessive project that seems to inspire the same from others. A few years ago, Leor Galil, a Chicago music writer, set out to listen to Farley’s entire corpus, from start to finish, chronicling the journey in a zine titled Freaky 4 Farley. Four pages into Issue 1, he had already taken on the grim tone of an Arctic explorer. “I’ve become a little tired of the album 25 songs in,” he wrote, “which makes me concerned about my ability to get through the rest of this listening quest.” Issue 2 begins, “I failed.”

The umbrella name that Farley uses for all his outputs is Motern. He made the word up; or rather, he seized on what he felt was its strange power after misspelling the word “intern” in what he had planned to be a 10,000-page novel. To Farley, creativity has always been a volume business. That, in fact, is the gist of “The Motern Method,” a 136-page manifesto on creativity that he self-published in 2021. His theory is that every idea, no matter its apparent value, must be honored and completed. An idea thwarted is an insult to the muse and is punished accordingly.

“If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop,” he said. “You just do it and do it and do it, and you sort it out later.” Or, as the case may be, you don’t, but rather send it all out into the abyss, hoping that someday, somebody, somewhere will hear it.

I was aware, of course, that on some level I’d been had, the one tiny fish vain enough to be snared in Farley’s trawl. It left me a bit paranoid. “Charlie Roxburgh” suddenly seemed like such a perfect Boston pseudonym that I spent a day investigating whether he was a real person. (He’s real, lives in Connecticut and makes corporate videos for his day job.) I lost another day chasing after a Letterboxd commenter who goes by the handle dcs577 and was so baffled by the popularity of Farley’s movies that he published his own short e-book, “The Not Motern Method.” It urges readers to give up on their artistic dreams, and even mimics Farley’s buckshot S.E.O., by appearing in multiple, slightly different versions. Surely he had to be a Farley alter ego. (Nope: a 36-year-old movie buff in Missouri.)

Mostly I was trying to figure out whether I thought Farley was a bad guy. Did his scheme represent the inevitable cynical end product of a culture in the grips of algorithmic platforms? Or might it be a delightful side effect? Was his work spam or a kind of outsider art? Was he just the Poop Song Guy, or was he closer to Steve Keene, the Brooklyn-based, Gen-X-hipster-approved painter of over 300,000 works who has been the subject of books and museum retrospectives? As it happens, Farley has a song about Steve Keene. It’s on a Papa Razzi album titled “I Am Not Wasting My Life,” which suggested he was asking some of the same questions.

When I went to Danvers to meet Farley in December, it became quickly apparent that he is the most transparent person in the world. He’s got a thick head of hair, high cheekbones and a friendly, Kyle Chandler-like face that another Letterboxd reviewer correctly identified as “youth-pastory.” When he picked me up at my hotel, he was wearing a fleece-lined brown hoodie that, judging by social media, is the only outer layer he wears throughout the New England winter — including on the 15-to-20 mile walks he takes twice a week. He struck me as the kind of guy who wears shorts the moment it gets above 48 degrees. Compulsively early, he confessed that he arrived at the lobby an hour before we were scheduled to meet.

You might mistake Motern’s aesthetic for stoner humor, but Farley says he has never had a sip of alcohol, much less done drugs. By his own description, he eats like a picky 12-year-old. When I made him take me to a restaurant in Salem called Dube’s Seafood, famed for its belly clams, he ordered chicken nuggets and buried them beneath a blizzard of salt and ground pepper, removing the top of the pepper shaker to pour it on more directly. In the car we listened to the Rolling Stones, the Replacements, Tom Waits. “It’s a mammoth accomplishment of self-control for me not to be playing my own music right now,” he said, though his efforts at restraint were puzzling, given that I was in all likelihood the one person on Earth at that moment whose job was to listen to it.

All of Farley’s life he has wanted to make things and have people see and hear them. After going to school at Providence College, he moved to Manchester, N.H., specifically because he knew nobody there who might distract him. “If you know people, they want you to go to cookouts,” he says. “I designed my entire life to not have to go to cookouts.” Even now, he cannot abide downtime; to him, the wasted time of a party or watching a football game is measured in songs or scripts he could have written. At no point did Farley consider a more conventional route such as film school or a low-level job in the entertainment industry. Instead, he took a job at a group home for teenagers, knocking out a 40-hour week in three days so that he could work on music and movies the other four. He would leave Moes Haven CDs in public places across Manchester, hoping somebody would pick them up; he slipped them into the stacks at local record stores, like a reverse shoplifter. He would drive people to the airport just so he could force his music on them on the way.

Farley’s persona is simultaneously grandiose — “I really do think I’m the greatest songwriter of the 21st Century,” he told me — and knowingly self-effacing. One night, I went with him to a tiny independent theater in Lexington for a screening of the Motern film “Magic Spot,” a time-travel comedy. On the drive down, I asked what the endgame for the movies was. Obviously, they have a very different business model from his music. What if somebody gave him, say, a million dollars to make his next movie? He thought for a second.

“Three-hundred-thousand for me and Charlie, spread the rest around to the people who have helped us all these years, make a $10,000 movie and get sued,” he said. (That would be about twice the budget of a typical Motern joint.)

“Magic Spot” wasn’t on the marquee when we pulled up, but there was a flier taped to the door. “We couldn’t afford color copies, but we did our best,” the theater owner said as he let us in. There were 11 people in the audience, including Farley’s father and brother-in-law, both of whom were in the movie. There was also a film student named Taylor, who had driven up from the Cape and would end up seeing three Motern screenings within a month, and two guys down from Manchester, one of whom was turning the other on to the Farley canon. A few minutes into the movie, the sound went out, and we sat for about 10 minutes while Farley frantically tried to fix it. He was on the verge of jury-rigging a solution involving holding a microphone to his laptop when the sound system miraculously healed itself.

“A huge success! I’m on cloud nine,” he said, as we headed back toward Danvers. After the show, he refused to accept his share of the ticket sales, instead pressing extra money into the owner’s hands as thanks.

For somebody so driven to find an audience and so immune to embarrassment, the advent of the digital age was a miracle. Farley began uploading the Moes Haven catalog to iTunes when it came out, and then to Spotify. As described in the closely autobiographical Motern film “Local Legends,” Moes Haven was intended to “meld the sounds of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Pink Floyd, into a musical concoction that was going to blow the minds of millions of fans all the way around the world.” As it turned out, Farley noticed that the only song that seemed to blow minds, or at least get downloaded, was a comic throwaway called “Shut Up Your Monkey.” (“Get down/Get funky/Shut up/Your monkey.”)

“Some people would have quit right there,” he says. “I saw an opportunity.”

Whatever the dubious value of any individual song in the Farley universe, it’s as part of the enormous body of the whole, the magnum opus, that it gains power.

A lot of energy has been spent trying to pick the lock of the recommendation algorithms that can make or break a song on Spotify and other streaming services. Any number of online courses, distributors and publishing companies promise to navigate the labyrinth of inputs — playlist inclusion, natural language processing, average length of listens, influencer attention, metrics like “acousticness,” “speechiness” and “danceability” — that will push a song onto millions of users’ recommended playlists. Critics, meanwhile, bemoan the rise of bands like Greta Van Fleet, an “algorithmic fever dream” according to Pitchfork, who seem to be engineered to be the Next Song after whatever it was you actually chose to listen to.

When I asked Farley how much of this he factors into his work, the answer was “almost zero.” He gets the sense that longer titles seem to work better than short ones and that around a minute and a half is a good minimum length. But for the most part, his is a blunt-force attack on the softer target of search results. At its most intentionally parasitic, this includes such tracks as “A Review of ‘Exile on Main Street’” designed to be discovered by the Rolling Stones-curious. A 2013 album credited to the Passionate & Objective Jokerfan takes advantage of the fact that song titles cannot be copyrighted. Thus, “This Girl Is On Fire (Quick, Grab a Fire Extinguisher!),” “(Almost) Instant Karma” and “Searching for Sugarman,” which, unlike the more famous “Sugar Man,” by Rodriguez, is about a baker whose sugar delivery is running late. Farley says he has since sworn off these kinds of tricks.

These days, he sets himself a relatively light goal of one 50-song album a month, recorded in a spare bedroom in his house. (Fifty tracks is the limit that CD Baby, which Farley uses to distribute and manage his music, allows, a regulation that may or may not have something to do with Farley, who used to put as many as 100 on an album.) Once he reaches his quota, he begins the tedious work of checking the levels of each song, entering titles and metadata (genre, writer, length, etc.), creating an album title and cover art (nearly always a selfie) and uploading the package one song at a time.

Farley showed me a worn, green spiral notebook in which he meticulously tracks his output and earnings. From Spotify, he earns roughly a third of a cent per stream; Amazon and Apple pay slightly more on average: between a third and three-quarters of a cent. TikTok, on the other hand, pays musicians by the number of videos featuring their songs and is thus immune to Farley’s strategy; when Kris and Kylie Jenner recorded a video of themselves dancing to Farley’s song about Kris, millions of people saw it, but Farley earned less than 1 cent.

Among other topics Farley told me he planned to tackle in future albums were: colleges, household items, tools, musical instruments. I had planned to ask what categories haven’t worked, but what had become clear by then is that the idea of any one song, or even album, hitting the jackpot isn’t the point. Even after Spotify’s recent announcement that it would no longer pay royalties on songs receiving fewer than a thousand streams, Farley’s business model rests on the sheer bulk of his output. And so does his artistic model. Whatever the dubious value of any individual song in the Farley universe, it’s as part of the enormous body of the whole, the magnum opus, that it gains power. This is especially true when you consider that an artificial intelligence could conceivably produce 24,000 songs, Farley’s entire oeuvre, in about a day, a fact that gives his defiantly human, even artisanal, labor a kind of lonely Sisyphean dignity. Whatever else Farley’s work is, it is not AI — even when it barely seems to be I.

A year or two ago, Farley discovered with some chagrin that he was no longer the No. 1 result for the search “poop song.” There was another Poop Song Guy.

His name is Teddy Casey, and amazingly, he is also from a Boston suburb, Newton. That’s where the similarities with Farley stop. Casey has precisely two songs available for streaming: a sweet kids’ song about animals called “Monkey,” and “The Poop Song,” which has over four million streams across various platforms.

Casey is 55; until recently he was working as a bartender and hosting open-mic nights near where he lives in midcoast Maine. When I reached him, he was back home after a week in New Hampshire, training to become a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier. He wrote his poop song around 2009, but he didn’t get around to posting it until 2020. “It didn’t do anything for months,” he said. “And then all of a sudden, one month it made $20. I was like, Wow, cool. Buy a case of beer.”

These days, the song brings in about $1,200 per month, enough to pay his rent, Casey told me, with what sounded like a Lebowskian shrug. “I have other songs that I want to put up,” he said. “But I kind of don’t want to sell out.”

I asked if he knew about the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, and he said he’d heard a few of their songs. “I’m not making this up,” he said. “There’s this other guy, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee. His idea was to customize every poop song. So there’s a Steven Poop song, a Bob Poop song, a Mary Poop song. He’s got hundreds!”

I told him that both bands were in fact the same person.

“Well, OK,” he said, as if realizing the full extent of what he was up against. “I like mine better, but I’m biased,” he said, finally. “You can tell he knows how to write songs, but I think he’s just been going for volume.”

In fact, I knew about the suite of songs that combine Farley’s two most successful genres — names and poop — because he was working on a new set of them when I visited him. He estimated that he had already completed about 3,000, but there were always new names.

“This can be kind of painful,” he warned, switching on his keyboard and firing up his laptop. He donned headphones, consulted a list of names and got to work. In the silence of the room, I could just hear the soft click of the keyboard and his vocals:

Jamilah, p-p-p-poop/Jamilah poop poop poop.

In “Local Legends,” which is something like Farley’s “All That Jazz,” there is a fantasy sequence in which Farley imagines the two sides of his personality arguing: one, the serious, heartfelt artist, the other a greasy record executive demanding ever more poop songs. Of course, the scene can only be a fantasy, and can only have Farley playing both characters, because the greasy record executive belongs to a lost world — one in which drastically fewer people had a chance to produce art and the work was often corrupted by corporate gatekeepers, but in which there was also a clearly marked road to an audience and a living. Farley represents both the best and worst of the incentives and opportunities that have taken this world’s place. Certainly, there are few creators working today in any medium who would not recognize the anxiety he embodies: that their work now lives or dies by the vagaries of opaque algorithms serving a bottomless menu of options to an increasingly distracted public. And that if they don’t bow to the demands of these new realities, their work — and by extension they — will simply disappear. Which is to say that while the experience of watching Farley work was not unpainful, as promised, neither was it totally unfamiliar.

After a minute and a half of “The Jamilah Poop Song,” Farley paused. He adjusted a few dials, consulted his notebook, thought for a few seconds and plowed on to the next song. Different tempo, different vocals, similar theme.

Tunka, Tunka , he sang. Poop, poop poop poop poop .

Brett Martin is the author of ‘‘Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution’’ and a three-time James Beard Award winner. He most recently wrote about Las Vegas’s punk museum for the magazine. Chris Buck is a photographer and director. He was the first recipient of the Arnold Newman Portrait Prize.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Taylor, a film student who watched many screenings of Farley’s films. Taylor uses they and them pronouns, not he and him.

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