George Steiner at the New Yorker

Between 1967 and 1997, George Steiner wrote more than 130 pieces on a great range of topics for The New Yorker, making new books, difficult ideas, and unfamiliar subjects seem compelling not only to intellectuals but to "the common reader." He possesses a famously dazzling mind: paganism, the Dutch Renaissance, children's games, war-time Britain, Hitler's bunker, and chivalry attract his interest as much as Levi-Strauss, Cellini, Bernhard, Chardin, Mandelstam, Kafka, Cardinal Newman, Verdi, Gogol, Borges, Brecht, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, and art historian/spy Anthony Blunt. Steiner makes an ideal guide from the Risorgimento in Italy to the literature of the Gulag, from the history of chess to the enduring importance of George Orwell. Again and again everything Steiner looks at in his New Yorker essays is made to bristle with some genuine prospect of turning out to be freshly thrilling or surprising.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 01/30/2009
ISBN: 9780811217040
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 7.84h x 5.28w x 0.98d

Review Citations: Booklist 01/01/2009 pg. 35
New York Times Book Review 03/15/2009 pg. 23