Herzog
1964 · 371 pages
Moses Herzog, a professor whose wife left him for his closest friend, comes apart and writes furious unsent letters to philosophers, ex-wives, and the dead. Bellow makes a breakdown enormous fun.
★ 7.8
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Historian's Craft
1949 · 197 pages
Bloch's son asked what the use of history was. He answered from hiding: history is the science of men in time, and evidence speaks only when questioned. The Gestapo shot him in 1944.
★ 6.4
Selected Non-Fictions
1999 · 560 pages
Borges wrote criticism the way he wrote fiction, in short pieces with trapdoors, on subjects from Dante to King Kong. Every writer creates his own precursors, he argues, and literary history rearranges itself.
★ 6.4
The New Science
1725 · 520 pages
History can be known, Vico argues, because men made it. He reads myth and law as the record of every nation passing through ages of gods, heroes, and men, then collapsing into barbarism.
★ 6.4
What Is History?
1961 · 272 pages
Facts do not speak for themselves, Carr insists. The historian decides which ones get to speak, so study the historian before the evidence. English-speaking historians are still arguing with him.
★ 6.0