Let me add, with one proviso, another option to Glen Johnson's list (an
enticing one that I need to take with me to my local bookstore):  the
familiar essays of Samuel Pickering, available in 1/2 dozen volumes or more
by now.  Pickering is intensely observant and reflective, witty and
irreverent and iconoclastic, unpretentious and self-mocking, and a careful
craftsman.

The proviso:  I frequently use the essays in my freshman composition
courses, but 18-19 year olds occasionally labor to respond to Pickering's
middle-aged male preoccupation with on a handful of topics (family, sex,
money, mortality, ambition).

Steve Jobe
[log in to unmask]