Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old ‘seafoodetarian’ who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mitchell_(writer)) immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The […]

A central bond, a cherished value, a unique relationship, a profound human need, a type of love. What is the nature of friendship, and what is its significance in our lives? How has friendship changed since the ancient Greeks began to analyze it, and has modern technology altered its very definition? In this fascinating exploration

What Charles Rosen’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Rosen) celebrated book The Classical Style (1971) did for music of the Classical period, this volume of 1995 brilliantly does for the Romantic era. An exhilarating exploration of the musical language, forms, and styles of the Romantic period, it captures the spirit that enlivened a generation of composers and musicians, and in doing so

Noam Chomsky’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky) book Syntactic Structures (1957) was one of the first serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct a comprehensive theory of language which may be understood in the same sense that a chemical or biological theory is understood by experts in those fields. It proved to be a seminal work in linguistics. It is

Published originally in German as Die Ringe des Saturn. Eine englische Wallfahrt (1995), The Rings of Saturn (1998) – with its curious archive of photographs – records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald

Written on the brink of World War II and then published in 1941, Rebecca West’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_West and http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rwest.htm) classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) probes the

‘The Proper Study of Mankind is Man’ appears as a line in the poem ‘An Essay on Man‘ by Alexander Pope in 1734. Isaiah Berlin chooses this as a title for a collection of his essentially humanistic writings. Berlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin) was one of the leading thinkers of the last century and one of its finest writers.