Joy of Reading : A Passionate Guide to 189 of the World's Best Authors and Their Works

This is an enormously readable, critical description of the classic works and their authors, from Homer and Dante to Solzhenitsyn and Salinger, written by the former editor of The Encyclopedia Britannica, The Annals of America (20 Volumes), and The History of Knowledge. The book consists of 15 chapters organized chronologically, from the Golden Age that includes Aristotle and Heroditus to only yesterday, with descriptions of great works by Orwell and Heinlen. Van Doren will begin each chapter with a short introduction about the period, placing the works within that period’s history, and the influence that history had on later books and times. The Joy of Reading contains insightful descriptions, analysis, and comments about a wide range of genres - fiction, poetry, drama, children’s books, philosophy, history, science, and reference books. The author’s personal commentary will awaken and renew a love of literature in every reader. The Joy of Reading will include a complete bibliography. Originally published in 1985, that version of The Joy of Reading was organized alphabetically, based on the authors’ names. In this complete revision, the entries are organized chronologically, and each chapter contains a historical essay on the period it covers, as well as descriptions of each author’s major works. Also included are new entries on more recent works and their authors.

Van Doren is the coauthor of the classic How to Read a Book with philosopher Mortimer J. Adler; the author of A History of Knowledge (which sold 30,000 copies in hardcover and 150,000 in paperback); and the author or editor of The Idea of Progress, Great Treasury of Western Thought, The Annals of America, Second Chance: An American Story, as well as several novels for young people and Webster's American biographies. He is an adjunct professor of the University of Connecticut, Torrington Campus. His father was Mark Van Doren, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and professor at Columbia.