Primo Levi, who died in 1987 in what is believed to be a suicide, was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and one of the most profound writers to emerge from the Holocaust. Levi’s testimony to the horrors he suffered can be... Read More

This author was once the wise-fool of poetry criticism. His “Reaper Essays,” taken from the journal he co-edited with Rodney McDowell, was filled with an equal amount of hubris and whimsy. Years later Jarman’s newest collection of... Read More

“The British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott began an autobiography that he never finished. The first paragraph simply says, ‘I died.’ In the fifth paragraph he writes, ‘Let me see. What was happening when I died? My prayer had been... Read More

“Very well then—he would travel. Not all that far, not quite to where the tigers were.” This quote from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice might describe Meredith, except that he has traveled far indeed—from the United States to... Read More

The “Best of…” anything carries with it the burden of expectation. That which claims to be above the rest is ultimately a matter of taste. Therefore, picking up and reading this collection of personal essays is somewhat similar to... Read More

It seems that almost all little girls in North America love horses and many women have a palpable affection for a horse’s majesty, even if they have never raised, trained, been kicked by, or even ridden one themselves. The Native... Read More

A book of essays on nuclear weapons, power and fallout of all sorts is not the place one might expect to find poetry, but the power of the images and language in this book transcend prose. Twenty-four authors contributed to this study of... Read More

“This is a book about neighbors: not about who our neighbors are but about who we imagine them to be.” In his introduction to Mutual Impressions, Stavans points out that our social concepts revolve mainly around how different our... Read More