Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas A. Basbanes. Knopf, 2020. Hardcover, 461 pages, $37.50. Reviewed by William F. Meehan III Henry Wadsworth Longfellow faded so far into American cultural memory that it is easy to forget he was the...
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings, 1918–1926 Edited by Robert W. Trogdon. Library of America, 2020. Hardcover, 863 pages, $35. Reviewed by Frank Freeman It was surely no accident that the first Library of America volume devoted to Ernest...
Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien Houghton Mifflin Company, 2020. Hardcover, 208 pages, $28. Reviewed by John Tuttle The name Tolkien is first and foremost associated with what is widely acknowledged as the man’s chief literary creation, The...
Milan Kundera, Ambiguous Prophet Trevor C. Merrill “Those no longer able to see reality with their own eyes are equally unable to hear correctly,” writes Josef Pieper. “It is specifically the man thus impoverished who inevitably falls prey to the demagogical spells of...
Borges and Me: An Encounter By Jay Parini. Doubleday, 2020. Hardcover, 320 pages, $27.95 Reviewed by Jerrod A. Laber We’ve all answered the question at some point about those famous individuals, dead or alive, that we would most like to have dinner with if given the...
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!