Why read The Lives of Literature?

Book cover of The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing

Book description

Mixing passion and humor, a personal work of literary criticism that demonstrates how the greatest books illuminate our lives

Why do we read literature? For Arnold Weinstein, the answer is clear: literature allows us to become someone else. Literature changes us by giving us intimate access to an astonishing variety…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Lives of Literature as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Robert F. Barsky

Author

Weinstein takes the age-old question – what is literature? – and transforms it into why we (would want to) read literature. For him, literature changes us, allows us to be someone else, and provides us insight into the world we inhabit, and many more worlds we haven’t. He reads a broad array of works, from Sophocles to James Joyce and Toni Morrison, and thinks about such issues as identification, empathy, and sympathy with those we come to ‘know’ through our reading.

From Robert's list on The best books to help us harness the ‘classics’ to address crises -- such as flight from persecution.