How to Read and Why - by Harold Bloom (Paperback)

About the Book

Bloom, the best-known literary critic of our time, shares his extensive knowledge of and profound joy in the works of a constellation of major writers, including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Austen, Dickinson, Melville, Wilde, and O'Connor in this eloquent invitation to readers to read and read well.

Book Synopsis

Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom.
Shedding all polemic, Bloom addresses the solitary reader, who, he urges, should read for the purest of all reasons: to discover and augment the self. His ultimate faith in the restorative power of literature resonates on every page of this infinitely rewarding and important book.

Review Quotes

John Banville The Irish Times Bloom is one of the last...of his kind...one of the greatest educators of our time...Wonderful...Bloom writes with passion of those writers whom he loves, and whose work for him affirms life.

John Sutherland The Washington Post Book World Harold Bloom is one of the great literary critics of his time...How to Read and Why is...the testament of a veteran.

Michael Pakenham The Baltimore Sun Superb...A wonderful, entertaining book...extraordinarily wise, nourishing, and beautiful.

About the Author

Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Berg Professor of English at New York University, and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than twenty books include Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, The Western Canon, The Book of J, and his most recent work, Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages. He is a MacArthur Prize fellow; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the recipient of many awards, including the Academy's Gold Medal for Criticism; and he holds honorary degrees from the universities of Rome and Bologna.