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Here are 65 spirited testimonies to the transformative power of reading from 65 distinguished contributors. Books change lives and this one examines this phenomenon. With contributors from fields as disparate as journalism, cooking and the arts, these brief and lively essays tell of the single book...

Imagine a world without Principia Mathematica, Rights of Man, the Bible, Shakespeare, or the Mahabharata.  Remarkable Books features 75 of the world's most momentous titles - from The Art of War to Anne...

Journalist Michael Kinsley has described Michael Dirda as "the best-read person in America," then added "but he doesn't rub it in." Michael M. Thomas called him, in the New York Observer, "the best book critic in America." Nevertheless, no one named Michael was involved when Dirda was awarded the...

A personal and critical work that celebrates the pleasure of books and reading. Largely unknown to readers today, Sir Philip Sidney's sixteenth-century pastoral romance Arcadia was long considered one of the finest works of prose fiction in the English language....

Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic Michiko Kakutani shares 100 personal, thought-provoking essays about books that have mattered to her and that help illuminate the world we live in today--with beautiful illustrations throughout. "A book tailormade for bibliophiles."--Oprah...

"Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished literary magazines in...

Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated   Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues...

*NATIONAL BESTSELLER* *A WGN Radio Best Book of 2024* *A Good Housekeeping Reads pick* A hilarious and incisive exploration of the joys of reading from a "beloved and wonderful writer" (George Saunders), teacher, bibliophile, and Thurber...

A librarian's laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving collection of love letters and breakup notes to the books in her life. If you love to read, and presumably you do since you've picked up this book (!), you know that some books affect you so profoundly they forever change the...

The inspiring true story of an indomitable librarian's journey from Nazi Germany to Seattle to Vietnam--all for the love of books. Growing up under Fascist censorship in Nazi Germany, Ruth Rappaport absorbed a forbidden community of ideas in banned books. After fleeing her home in...