In January, the National Book Critics Circle announced their annual award finalists for the 2013 publishing year. Among those honored for book reviewing, lifetime achievement, and books published in a myriad of categories is Yale University Press author Leo Damrosch, whose book Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World is a finalist
Follow @yaleRELIbooks See all 20% off titles in our YUP Backlist History promotion! It’s good practice, if you are going to argue with something, to aim at the best version of that thing you are arguing with. In Reason, Faith, and Revolution, Terry Eagleton argues that opponents of religion
Follow @yaleSCIbooks We can’t get enough of detective mysteries. On television, police or medical procedurals and dramas such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, House M.D., Sherlock, and Elementary, draw us from the comfort and safety of our homes into high-stakes worlds of danger, intrigue, and death. Our continued fascination with
Everyday Jews was first published in Poland in 1935 by Yehoshue Perle in an attempt to document the daily experiences of Polish Jews. It is a story of love and sex and spirit, a beautiful testimony to a strong and enduring people. Although originally chastised as crude, the novel quickly became
Yale University Press is pleased to announce a winner in the 2014 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. The judge, prize-winning and critically acclaimed poet Carl Phillips, has chosen Ansel Elkins’s manuscript, BLUE YODEL. “Through her arresting use of persona, in particular, Ansel Elkins reminds us of the pivotal role of
Follow @WRLBooks “Beginning of modern thought.” Witold Gombrowicz starts his guide through modern philosophy with characteristic concision. The “First Lesson” is a description of Kant’s contributions to philosophy, with some explanation of Descartes to see where Kant is coming from. Gombrowicz — playwright, diarist, novelist, and thinker — leaps through
Fifty years ago, Terry Eagleton—one of the foremost and polemical cultural critics and literary theorists—was appointed Fellow in English at Jesus College, Cambridge shortly after graduating from the university himself with a First in English. He was the youngest fellow in the history of the college since the eighteenth century,
People who watch U.S. television shows, attend Hollywood movies, and listen to pop music can’t help but believe that we are a nation in which we have sex with strangers regularly, where we wander the streets well-armed and prepared to shoot our neighbors at any provocation, and where the life
Jonathan Swift, although widely remembered as both an author and a public figure, remains quite enigmatic today. Leo Damrosch, author of the New York Times Notable Book of 2013, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World, and Ernest Bernbaum Research Professor of Literature at Harvard University, recently discussed the man’s mysterious
No one sings as purely as those who inhabit the deepest hell—what we take to be the song of angels is their song. —Franz Kafka in a letter to Milena Jesenska, August 26, 1920 The anguished metaphor that Kafka describes to Jesenska is perhaps characteristic of his life and work.