by the indispensable George Orwell, spanning the first two decades of his writing career. Even many years after his death, the more we read of Orwell, the more clearly we can think about our world and ourselves.

Orwell's breadth of experience, compassion, and political insight make his early essays among his best. Here he witnesses two kinds of executions in Burma ("A Hanging" and "Shooting an Elephant"), fires salvos at British colonialism ("How a Nation is Exploited"), copes with poverty in Paris ("A Day in the Life of a Tramp"), and works in a bookshop in Hampstead ("Bookshop Memories").

It was also during this period that Orwell wrote and published Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier (originally published for the Left Book Club), and the memoir of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia.

This first volume of the Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters contains some of the most remarkable writing of Orwell's entire career and will be enjoyed by anyone who believes that words can go a long way toward changing the world.