Why do we keep playing the lottery when we know we’ll lose? How does what we laugh atthose bad jokes, wry allusions, and nasty pratfallstell us who we are? And what happens when, through some unforeseen mishap, we lose our identities and become Jane or John Doe? Eric LeMay explores these and other questions in fifteen innovative essays that center on the American self. From reflections on small-town life and baby-making to meditations on found art, 19th century landscape gardens, webcams, and the emergence of the AIDS pandemic, these essays celebrate the layered selves we inhabit, inherent, and sometimes invent. With humor and with reverence, In Praise of Nothing beholds what Wallace Stevens has called the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

In Praise of Nothing: Essays, Memoir, and Experiments

Literature & Fiction

LeMay, Eric

Essays & Correspondence

Emergency Press

Is there a food more delightful, ubiquitous, or accessible than cheese? This book is a charming and engaging love letter to the food that Clifton Fadiman once called "milk’s leap toward immortality." Examining some cheeses we know as well as some we don’t; the processes, places, and people who make them; and the way cheeses taste us as much as we taste them, each chapter takes up a singular and exciting aspect of cheese: Why do we relish cheese? What facts does a cheese lover need to know? How did cheese lead to cheesiness? What’s the ideal way to eat cheese—in Paris, Italy, and Wisconsin? Why does cheese comfort us, even when it reeks? Finally, what foods pair well with which cheeses? 
Eric LeMay brings us cheese from as near as Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to as far as the Slow Food International Cheese Festival in Bra, Italy. In the witty, inventive, and wise company of his best girl, Chuck, he endures surly fromagers in Paris and dodges pissing goats in Vermont, a hurricane in Cambridge, and a dispiriting sense of hippie optimism in San Francisco; looks into curd and up at the cosmos; and even dons secondhand polyester to fathom America’s 1970s fondue fad. The result is a plucky and pithy tour through everything worth knowing about cheese.
***
AN EXCERPT FROM THIS BOOK APPEARS IN BEST AMERICAN FOOD WRITING 2009
***
It’s a challenge to describe the flavor of an excellent French cheese. Chuck and I were in our tiny rental in the Marais, hovering over a Langres. We didn’t have the funds for Champagne, but we had managed to get tipsy on a serviceable vin de pays, which is also a pleasant way to eat a Langres.
"It doesn’t play well with others," Chuck continued, the thick smack of pÂte slowing her speech. "It doesn’t respect lesser cheese."
"It’s like a road trip through Arizona in an old Buick," I offered. 
"It has a half-life inside your teeth."
"It has ideas."
"It gradually peels off the skin on the roof of your mouth."
"It attains absolute crustiness and absolute creaminess." 
Anyone can read that a salt-washed Langres is "salty," then taste its saltiness, but not everyone will taste in it the brilliant and irascible character of Proust’s PalamÈde de Guermantes, Baron de Charlus. Yet these more personal descriptions capture the experience of a Langres. It sparks associative leaps, unforeseen flashbacks, inspired flights of poetry and desire. Its riches reveal your own. W. H. Auden once remarked that when you read a book, the book also reads you. The same holds true for cheese: it tastes you. 
—From Immortal Milk

Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Cooking by Ingredient

Free Press

Is there a food more delightful, ubiquitous, or accessible than cheese? This book is a charming and engaging love letter to the food that Clifton Fadiman once called "milk's leap toward immortality" Examining some cheeses we know as well as some we don't, the processes, places, and people who make them, and the way cheeses taste us as much as we taste them, each chapter takes up a singular and exciting aspect of cheese: Why do we relish cheese? What facts does a cheese lover need to know? How did cheese lead to cheesiness? What's the ideal way to eat cheese in Paris, Italy, and Wisconsin? Why does cheese comfort us, even when it reeks? Finally, what pairs well with which cheeses? Eric LeMay brings us as near as Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as far as the Slow Food International Cheese Festival in Bra, Italy. In the witty, inventive, and wise company of his best girl Chuck, he endures surly fromagers in Paris and dodges pissing goats in Vermont, a hurricane in Cambridge, and a dispiriting sense of hippie optimism in San Francisco; looks into curd and up at the cosmos; and even dons secondhand polyester to fathom America's 1970s fondue fad. The result is a plucky and pithy tour through everything worth knowing about cheese.

The ideas of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger have been described as an intellectual time bomb, as some of the most revolutionary thought in Western history. Despite the enormous amount of secondary scholarships available on Heidegger, it is - due to the complexity of his thought and the density of his writing - difficult for the curious beginner to gain an insight into Heidegger's philosophy. Heidegger For Beginners serves as an entry into the ideas of on of the 20th Century's most important thinkers, situating Heidegger's thought within its philosophical and historical context - alongside such thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Sartre.
Heidegger For Beginners explicates many of Heidegger's central ideas, including the Nothing, average-everydayness, care, existence, being-in-the-world, the One, the critique of technology, anxiety, and most importantly, being - a notion which may offer us the key to understanding the very mystery of our own existence. Explained here in a way that makes it both accessible and relevant, Heidegger's thought not only challenges an entire intellectual tradition, but also challenges our own self-conceptions, the very manner in which we, as humans, choose to exist.

Heidegger For Beginners

Pitts, Jennifer A.

Arts & Photography

For Beginners

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LeMay, Eric. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by LeMay, Eric

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LeMay, Eric. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

In Praise of Nothing: Essays, Memoir, and Experiments

Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese

Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese

Heidegger For Beginners