"Harold Bloom, named "The indispensible critic" by the New York Review of Books, returns with a definitive yet personal book on twelve American writers upon whose work he believes the American canon is built. While his references to American writers are wide-ranging, he focuses on twelve: Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, William...

Tracing the lives of a group of friends, this novel follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age. Separately and together, they query the relationship of past to present, and the meaning of life itself.

"The "Fresh Air" book critic investigates the enduring power of The Great Gatsby -- "The Great American Novel we all think we've read, but really haven't." Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece...

"Few contemporary writers ask the questions about faith, morality, and God that Christian Wiman does, and even fewer—perhaps none—do so with his urgency and eloquence. Wiman, an award-winning poet and the author of My Bright Abyss, lays the motion of his mind on the page in this genre-defying work, an indivisible blend of poetry, criticism, theology, and searing memoir....Zero at the Bone begins with Wiman's preoccupation with despair,...

"From the New York Times bestselling author of THE MOST DANGEROUS BOOK, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. THE SINNER AND THE SAINT is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story-and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his...

"From "one of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers" (The New York Times), intimate and sharply observed commentary on life, art, politics, and "the war on terror." Mohsin Hamid's brilliant, moving, and extraordinarily clever novels have not only made him an international bestseller, they have earned him a reputation as a "master critic of the modern global condition" (Foreign Policy). His stories are at once timeless and of-the-moment,...

"Denby sat in on a tenth-grade English class in a demanding New York public school for an entire academic year, and visited other schools. He read all the stories, poems, plays, and novels that the kids were reading, and creates an impassioned portrait of charismatic teachers at work, classroom dramas large and small, and fresh and inspiring encounters with the books themselves. Lit Up is a dramatic narrative that traces awkward and baffled beginnings...

Presents a collection of essays, book reviews, and other writings from more than thirty years of the author's contributions to the London Review of Books.

The fifty essays in Second Words span the period from 1962 to 1980 and reveal Margaret Atwood's views on feminism, Canadian literature, the creative process, nationalism, sexism, as well as critical commentary on such writers as Erica Jong, E. L. Doctorow, Northrop Frye, Roch Carrier, Marie-Claire Blais, Marge Piercy, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, and many more.

An attempted insurrection, a country divided, a democracy threatened. It was the Spanish Civil War of 1936, surprisingly, that Sarah Watling found herself drawn to when confounded by the tumultuous politics of our present day. This was a conflict that galvanized tens of thousands of volunteers from around the world to join the fight. For them, the choice seemed clear: either you were for fascism or you were against it. Seeking to understand how they...