Includes both nonfiction and fiction reading recommendations for armchair or "real" travelers. This librarian famous for reader's advisory covers places as diverse as Afghanistan, Appalachia, Arizona, Baltimore, Boston, Burma, Congo, Corfu, Detroit, England, Finland, the Galapagos, Guernica, Hawaii, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Jordan, Korea, Law Vegas, Los Angeles, Maine, Malaysia, Martha's Vineyard, Miami, Nebraska, New York City, New Orleans, Niagara...

"This entertaining guide to some of the best short novels of all time, from a bestselling historian, is the "perfect gift for busy bibliophiles" (BookPage). Experience the joys of literature with this "exciting guide to all that the world of fiction has to offer" (The New York Times Book Review): a compulsively readable, deeply engaging discussion of great short novels. A journey into fiction designed with our contemporary attention spans in mind,...

The author shares her enthusiasm for more than 100 books: novels and memoirs by some of today's most gifted writers; favorite classics worth reading or rereading; and nonfiction works that illuminate our social and political landscape. -- Adapted from back cover. "From "the most powerful book critic in the English-speaking world" (Vanity Fair) comes 100 personal, thought-provoking essays of the life-changing books she wouldn't want you to miss--beautifully...

"An illuminating, learned, well-written, and entertaining survey of the giants of world literature. Busy people, and especially the young, will be grateful for this useful and concise introduction." -Paul Johnson Not simply a grand work of reference, The Great Books is a captivating journey through two-and-a-half millennia of the great Western tradition. The eminent British philosopher Anthony O'Hear is our capable tour guide, taking readers on...

Yale professor Harold Bloom--who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic--gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon, from "Don Quivote" to "Book of numbers"; from "Wuthering Heights"...