Adam Kirsch

"An erudite and accessible survey of Jewish life and culture in the twentieth century, as reflected in seminal texts. Following The People and the Books, which "covers more than 2,500 years of highly variegated Jewish cultural expression" (Robert Alter, New York Times), formidable and perceptive literary critic Adam Kirsch now turns to the salient works of modern Jewish thought. From the vast emigration of Jews out of Eastern Europe to the Holocaust...

In the Global Novel, acclaimed literary critic Adam Kirsch explores some of the 21st century's best-known writers--including Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami, Roberto Bolaño, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, Margaret Atwood, Michel Houellebecq, and Elena Ferrante. They are employing a way of imagining the world that sees different places and peoples as intimately connected. From climate change and sex trafficking to religious fundamentalism and...

In his second collection of poems, Adam Kirsch examines the world we live in now, a world in which the dangers of history have invaded the pleasures of private life. His connected poems use traditional forms to create a free, contemporary music amidst the omens of the post-September 11 world. Mr. Kirsch is at home with all the strange juxtapositions of our culture: he can celebrate 'the paradisal sighs' of Jane Birkin and still hear the 'angelic harmonies'...

"Mainly intended for readers who have little sense of what the Talmud actually is, Kirsch explores the Talmud as a critic and journalist. Maybe the best way to describe this book is as a kind of travelogue-a report on what Kirsch saw during his seven-and-a-half-year journey through the Talmud"--

"August Sander's photographic portraits of ordinary people in Weimar Germany inspire this uncanny new collection of poems by one of America's most celebrated writers and critics Through his portraits of ordinary people--soldiers, housewives, children, peasants, and city dwellers--August Sander, the German photographer whose work chronicled the extreme tensions and transitions of the twentieth century, captured a moment in history whose consequences...

"A collection of essays from a "great poet-critic-intellectual" (Daily Beast). In these brilliant, wide-ranging essays, published over the last seven years in the New Republic, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, renowned American critic Adam Kirsch explores the intersection of literature with larger questions about ideas, history, and society. Kirsch has been described as "elegant and astute . . . [a] critic of the very first order" (Michiko Kakutani,...

Long regarded as the most accurate rendering of Plato's Republic that has yet been published, this work is the first literal translation of this classic. There is annotated text, an essay--as well as indices--which will better enable the reader to approach the heart of Plato's intention. This edition includes a new introduction by critic Adam Kirsch, setting the work in its intellectual context for a new generation of readers.--