Like the harrowing tales of swashbuckling pirates and square-jawed detectives in vintage pulp magazines, each beautifully crafted essay in John Jeremiah Sullivan's collection Pulphead is a self-contained world. But where the hodgepodge content of a pulp rag leaps from one escapist fantasy to another, Sullivan's masterful essays invite an honest confrontation with reality, especially when considered in light of one another. By highlighting features of American life as diverse as a Christian rock festival in Pennsylvania, ancient caves and their modern-day explorers in Mississippi, the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the King of Pop, Pulphead compels its readers to consider each as an equal sum in the bizarre arithmetic of American identity.

Much of Sullivan’s magazine work for GQ, Harper's and the Paris Review has found its way into this collection, which is fine because the genius of these essays comes from reading them as constituents of Pulphead's patchwork narrative, not in isolation. After skimming the table of contents, you're not quite sure how, or whether, a somber reflection on the state of the Gulf Coast after Katrina will segue successfully into a meditation on the cult of reality television. But it works somehow, and more often than not it works eerily well; that you'll likely find it easy to supply such transitions for yourself, with only a gentle nudge from Sullivan, is a testament to how extraordinarily nimble his writing is.

This sensitivity is most clearly on display in the portraits Sullivan paints of the people who populate his essays. The characters he encounters in his tour of Americana often take on three-dimensional depth with only minimal description. Sullivan can also be devastatingly funny. His account of hauling a 29-foot RV up a steep hill with the help of five West Virginian woodsmen rings with as much absurdity and wit as anything the giants of New Journalism ever put to paper.

It’s hardly a coincidence, then, that Sullivan begins Pulphead by quoting Norman Mailer. In his resignation letter from Esquire magazine in 1960, Mailer writes, “Good-by now, rum friends, and best wishes. You got a good mag (like the pulp-heads say). . . .” Interesting that Sullivan excludes the second half of the quotation, in which Mailer warns Esquire’s editorial board, “you print nice stuff, but you gotta treat the hot writer right or you lose him like you just lost me.”

Omitting Mailer’s punch line is likely Sullivan’s attempt at humility, but make no mistake, he’s as red-hot a writer as they come.

Most journalists strive to write the “definitive piece,” an article so thoroughly researched and reported that it becomes the standard for a particular subject. John McPhee has been writing definitive pieces most of his life, and he offers us a sampling in his new book, Silk Parachute.

After reading an essay by McPhee, you feel you have gained a deep understanding of the topic. Consider “Spin Right and Shoot Left,” an essay about lacrosse, in which McPhee covers not only the history of the game, but all its rules and strategies. When you’ve finished reading, you feel ready to pick up a lacrosse stick and run onto the field. The experience is similar with “Checkpoints,” about fact-checking at The New Yorker. The essay leaves you impressed with the editors’ attention to detail and gives you an insider’s look at magazine publishing.

Many of the essays in Silk Parachute have appeared previously in The New Yorker, where McPhee has been a staff writer since 1965. Over those 45 years, he has written hundreds of essays, many of which have been compiled in one of his 28 books. His body of work includes Annals of the Former World, his authoritative book on geology that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1999.

Clearly, McPhee is a master of his trade, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he’s accustomed to writing the definitive piece. Yet Silk Parachute also offers a personal side of this accomplished author. In the book’s title essay, McPhee recounts his boyhood memories of his 99-year-old mother, while in “Season on the Chalk,” he relates travels with his family along the English Channel. “Nowheres” is an account of his life in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was born, and where he now resides.

Silk Parachute offers an eclectic sampling from an accomplished author who is as comfortable writing about the intricacies of impersonal topics as he is sharing the intimacies of his personal life.

John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

On top of writing acclaimed biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson has written pieces for seemingly every notable publication in America. This admirable body of work will be elevated even further by Isaacson’s first-rate collection, American Sketches, which offers brief but incisive looks at some of the key figures in recent history.

The book’s beauty is that the entries (ranging from reviews to profiles to eulogies) serve as a kind of late 20th- to early 21st-century history book. Isaacson has shaken hands with history over the last 25 years, whether it was the United States making peace with the Soviet Union, the advances of the digital revolution or the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina on his native New Orleans. As a man steeped in American history and the news industry—he was also the CEO of CNN—Isaacson shares his keen observations on the Clintons, Colin Powell and George W. Bush.

With sections devoted to Franklin and Einstein, Isaacson also reveals how the past can inspire the future. He connects Franklin to President Barack Obama by explaining, “I hoped that more politicians would emerge who were sage and sensible, and I came to believe that Obama was the most like Franklin of all our national politicians.” And in his essay “A New Way to View Science,” Isaacson stresses that though Einstein might be associated with hard-to-grasp ideas, people shouldn’t plead ignorance on science.

Ever the biographer, Isaacson delves into icons, discovering what exactly Madeleine Albright did as secretary of state; using a Q&A with Woody Allen to reveal that the famed director eschewed his nerdy onscreen persona when ditching longtime companion Mia Farrow for her adopted daughter; and characterizing George Plimpton as having chosen casualness over literary greatness.

Budding writers should take special note: Isaacson is far from jaded, always curious and open to discovery. It is fitting, then, that while helping out in New Orleans he found his next biography subject: fellow Big Easy native Louis Armstrong. It turns out journalism does have a future, though it might be in unlikely places.

Pete Croatto is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.

A good essay collection reveals something new about its subjects, while a great collection also reveals something about its author. Zadie Smith’s excellent Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays falls into the latter category. In a collection divided into four sections—Reading, Being, Seeing and Feeling—Smith brings deep knowledge and stunning wit to these nomadic pieces and in the process, brings the curtain up on herself.

A question running throughout the book is how someone, at age 34, gets to be so smart about so much. Smith writes a wonderful homage to Katharine Hepburn and in doing so, imparts an appreciation of the past two generations of filmmaking that film critics will envy. In the section on “Being,” she begins with a version of a lecture she gave to students of Columbia University’s Writing Program. It should be required reading for all writers, students or otherwise. Her approach to, and understanding of, the written word begins to explain how she burst onto the literary scene in 2000 with the novel White Teeth. And her essays on her personal life, especially the tender handling of her father’s memory in “Smith Family Christmas,” “Accidental Hero” and “Dead Man Laughing,” are glimpses into her own complex family, displaying unflinching insight without sacrificing a loving appreciation.

Smith also displays a keen mind for literary analysis in her final essay, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: The Difficult Gifts of David Foster Wallace.” Here she bravely disseminates Wallace’s work, not in simplistic terms, but in language that renders the demanding author’s body of work in manageable bites.

With Changing My Mind, Smith has given the art of the essay its most entertaining and educational revival in years. It’s the kind of collection a reader will keep within reach for a long while, simply based on Smith’s virtuosic performance.

Michael Lee is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Through the centuries, technologies have profoundly affected the way people read. When the codex—that is, a book with pages to turn—replaced the scroll, readers approached the text differently. They could now concentrate easily on a single page and individual paragraphs and chapters. Printing with movable type made books available to thousands of people previously denied the reading experience. And electronic technology in our own day has again changed the communications landscape.

Robert Darnton knows this territory as well as anyone and views the subject from a unique perspective. As a scholar, he helped invent the modern discipline of the History of the Book and is the Director of the Harvard University Library. He loves rare book rooms but is also enthusiastic about creating a digital Republic of Letters. The stimulating and thought-provoking essays in The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future provide us with an excellent overview of where we have been and where we are likely to be headed.

Darnton points out that in each age the information technology has been unstable. Even in our day, there is no guarantee that copies made by Google Book Search—or anyone else—will last. He notes that digital copies are even more vulnerable than microfilm, the advanced technology of several years ago, to decay and obsolescence. “Paper,” he writes, “is still the best medium of preservation, and libraries still need to fill their shelves with words printed on paper.” He believes the strongest argument for the book is how effective it is for ordinary readers. Each of us can pick up a book and read it; a computer screen does not give most of us the same satisfaction. Darnton quotes Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, as admitting that for anything more than four or five pages he prefers printed paper to computer screens.

Darnton’s thoughtful and incisive essays on this important topic should be of interest to a wide range of book lovers.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller. 

In the monumental, absorbing A New Literary History of America, editors Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors have assembled a fascinating collection of writings on a range of subject matters: everything from maps, diaries and Supreme Court decisions to religious tracts, public debates, comic strips and rock and roll.

Over 200 essays were commissioned for A New Literary History of America, and the contributors range from Jonathan Lethem to Sarah Vowell to visual artist Kara Walker. They are contemporary poets, novelists, journalists, screenwriters, painters, professors and what the editors call “cultural citizens”—not specialists who simply observe the culture, but enthusiasts who participate in it. Each provides a unique perspective and acts as an invaluable guide through this “matrix of American culture.” The editors’ aim is “not to smash a canon or create a new one” but to “generate a new and fresh sense of America.” Beginning in 1507 with the Spanish conquistadors, the book covers it all, from the Salem witch trials to Hawaiian queens to Malcolm X and Mickey Mouse.

In 1,000-odd pages, Marcus and Sollors have compiled a remarkable history of America. Their expanded definition of literary encompasses “not only what is written but also what is voiced, what is expressed, what is invented, in whatever form.” Most of all, A New Literary History of America is a reminder of just how vibrant and diverse United States history—and culture—really is.

Lacey Galbraith writes from Nashville.