Michael Dirda

Once out of school, most of us read for pleasure. Yet there is another equally important, though often overlooked, reason that we read: to learn how to live. Though books have always been understood as life-teachers, the exact way in which they instruct, cajole, and convince remains a subject of some mystery. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer prize-winning critic Michael Dirda shows...

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). His latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on a life in literature. Reaching from the classics to the post-moderns, his allusions dance from Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and M. F. K. Fisher to Marilynne Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson,...

From Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic Michael Dirda comes a collection of his most personal and engaging essays on the literary life--the perfect companion for any lover of books. Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" by the Paris Review and "the best book critic in America" by the New York Observer. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, he was awarded for his reviews in the Washington Post, and he picked up an Edgar...

Collects short fiction from the pages of Fantasy & Science Fiction, featuring tales from such authors as Robert A. Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg, Stephen King, Gene Wolfe, and Paolo Bacigalupi.