Teachers of literature make judgments about value. They tell their students which works are powerful, beautiful, surprising, strange, or insightful – and thus, which are more worthy of time and attention than others. Yet the field of literary studies...

Since the rediscovery of her work in the late 1980s, Annemarie Schwarzenbach—journalist, traveler, archaeologist, opium addict, and antifascist novelist—has become a European cult figure among free spirited bohemians.   Available in Engli...

Laszlo F. Foldenyi is a writer who is learned in reference, taste, and judgment, and entertaining in style. Taking a place in the long tradition of public intellectual and cultural criticism, his work resonates with that of Montaigne, Rilke, and Mann...

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each". Modernity rules our lives by clock and calendar, dividing the stream of time into units and coordinating every passi...

Is the point of philosophy to transmit beliefs about the world, or can it sometimes have higher ambitions? In this bold study, Karen Zumhagen-Yekple makes a critical contribution to the "resolute" program of Wittgenstein scholarship, revealing his "T...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is eminently, delightfully, and delectably quotable. This truth goes far beyond the first line of Pride and Prejudice, which has muscled out many other excellent sentences. So many gems of wit a...

"Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes", said Stamford, introducing us."How are you?" he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive". "How on earth did you kno...

As the world's preeminent creative writing program, the Iowa Writers' Workshop has produced an astonishing number of distinguished writers and poets since its establishment in 1936. Its alumni and faculty include twenty-eight Pulitzer Prize winners,...

Just as a traveler crossing a continent won't sense the curvature of the earth, one lifetime of reading can't grasp the largest patterns organizing literary history. This is the guiding premise behind "Distant Horizons", which uses the scope of data...

A charming memento of the Victorian era's literary colossus, "The Daily Charles Dickens" is a literary almanac for the ages. Tenderly and irreverently anthologized by Dickens scholar James Kincaid, this collection mines the British author's beloved n...