Showing titles in Literary History & Criticism

It’s the English class you didn't know you missed and the meaningful conversations you didn't know you craved. Join Vanessa Zoltan and Matt Potts as they bring thought, reflection and laughter to Harry Potter; not just as novels, but as instructive and inspirational texts that will teach us about our own lives. Relive the magic of Harry Potter chapter by chapter as Matt and Vanessa explore themes such as commitment, revenge and forgiveness. This podcast creates time in your week to think about life’s big questions. Because reading fiction doesn’t just help us escape the world, it helps ...

Sarah Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, to help explain the divisions ripping the United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism.

Before Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Jonathan Lethem became revered authors, they were readers. In this ebullient book, America’s favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted-playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America's most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark. The Writer’s Library is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries, and bookstores of today’s favorite authors.

La Reine Margot is a novel of suspense and drama which recreates the violent world of intrigue, murder, and duplicity of the French Renaissance. Dumas fills his canvas with a gallery of unforgettable characters, unremitting action, and the engaging generosity of spirit which has made him one of the world’s greatest and best-loved storytellers.

Un libro valiente, sutil y agudo sobre los milagros, la relación entre la ciencia y la fe, la redención o el destino final del hombre. Dios en el banquillo es una de las más conocidas colecciones de ensayos de Lewis, entre los que destacan El mito se hizo realidad, El gran milagro, ¿Sacerdotisas en la Iglesia? y, por supuesto Dios en el banquillo.

In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age 42, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn - King Lear - then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

You know the plots, but what about the minutiae? We delve into the Sherlock Holmes stories and provide answers to questions that arise, clarify muddy details, and look into some of the period terminology in this weekly podcast.

In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and strange, this book reintroduces us to our earliest thinkers through the lands they inhabited. To know the mental occupations of Homer or Heraclitus, one must visit their cities, sail their seas, and find landscapes not overwhelmed by the millennia that have passed but retain the atmosphere of that ancient life. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and a nexus of cross-cultural connection.

Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centers on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new stepsister enters Molly's quiet life, the loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford.

Highly Invested is a podcast centered around reading and re-reading Brandon Sanderson’s ever expanding Cosmere novels. Join Richie, James, and new reader Betsy on the journey of a lifetime as we worldhop from book to book discussing planets, magic systems, story arcs and unforgettable characters. Popular series include The Stormlight Archive, Mistborn, Warbreaker, Elantris, White Sand, and more. This podcast will be divided into spoiler sections and non-spoiler sections for listeners reading Cosmere novels for the first time.

The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes audiobook treatment of the rivalry between the two comic book giants. They are the two titans of the comic book industry - the Coke and Pepsi of superheroes - and for more than 50 years, Marvel and DC have been locked in an epic battle for spandex supremacy. At stake is not just sales, but cultural relevancy and the hearts of millions of fans. To many partisans, Marvel is now on top. But for much of the early 20th century, it was DC that was the undisputed leader.

In Minority Rule, Sarkar exposes how a strategic misdirection of blame over who is really screwing everything up is keeping the majority divided, while the real ruling minority of hedge fund managers, press barons, landlords and corporations remain on top. And it’s facilitating one of the biggest power grabs in history. Most crucially, she shows us how what we really have in common is being concealed by a deafening culture of distraction – and that the first step towards a better future is understanding what is happening now, and how we got here.

Susan Sontag was one of the most formidable, original, and influential thinkers of the last century. On Women presents seven essays and exchanges, spanning a range of subjects: the challenges and humiliations women face as they age; the relationship between women’s liberation and class struggle; beauty, which Sontag calls “that over-rich brew of so many familiar opposites”; feminism; fascism; and film. Taken together, these pieces—relentlessly curious, historically precise, politically robust, and allergic to easy categorization Sontag’s inimitable mind at work.

The major texts of Western culture are a gateway to wisdom that can widen your views on self and society in enduring ways. And now you can examine its most important works - whether drama, poetry, or narrative - in this series of 64 penetrating lectures that reveal astonishing common ground.

A forbidden love. A rising darkness. A coven of witches who may be her only hope. After escaping the High Council’s clutches, thanks to the rescue led by vampire Adrian de Lanier, Charlotte returns to Blackthorn Manor changed—her bloodline awakened, her magic stronger, and her connection to the Devourers trapped beneath the manor growing dangerously unstable. But as she struggles to control her newfound power, threats gather from every side. Victoria Blackwood-DuBois is preparing for war, the Supreme Council of Vampires is circling, and an ancient coven of seven formidable Salem witches...

Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch were the leading lights in a century that is considered the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. The Decameron, or Ten Days' Entertainment, is his most famous work, a collection of stories considered representative of the Middle Ages, as well as a product of the Renaissance.

Following the success of several recent inspirational and practical books for would-be writers, Poemcrazy is a perfect guide for everyone who ever wanted to write a poem but was afraid to try. Writing workshop leader Susan Wooldridge shows how to think, use one's senses, and practice exercises that will make poems more likely to happen.

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

We tend not to talk about books and war in the same breath—one ranks among humanity’s greatest inventions, the other among its most terrible. But as esteemed literary historian Andrew Pettegree demonstrates, the two are deeply intertwined. The Book at War explores the various roles that books have played in conflicts throughout the globe. With precise historical analysis and sparkling prose, The Book at War accounts for the power—and the ambivalence—of words at war.

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Laurie Notaro isn't exactly a domestic goddess - unless that means she fully embraces her genetic hoarding predisposition, sneaks peeks at her husband's daily journal, or has made a list of the people she wants on her Apocalypse Survival team (her husband's not on it). Notaro chronicles her chronic misfortune in the domestic arts, including cooking, cleaning, and putting on Spanx while sweaty (which should technically qualify as an Olympic sport).