Menander (c. 341-291 BC) was the foremost innovator of Greek New Comedy, a dramatic style that moved away from the fantastical to focus upon the problems of ordinary Athenians. This collection contains the full text of 'Old Cantankerous' (Dyskolos), the only surviving complete example of New Comedy, as well as fragments from works including 'The Girl from Samos' and 'The Rape of the Locks', all of which are concerned with domestic catastrophes, the hazards of love and the trials of family ...

Essays that represents "the heart" of the Pulitzer Prize–winning author's work and "demonstrate his status as his generation's premier critical talent" ( Los Angeles Times).At each step of this journey through American cultural history, Louis Menand has an original point to make: he explains the real significance of William James's nervous breakdown, and of the anti-Semitism in T. S. Eliot's writing. He reveals the reasons for the remarkable commercial succ...

Hardly a club in the conventional sense, the organization referred to in the title of this superb literary hybrid—part history, part biography, part philosophy— consisted of four members and probably existed for less than nine months. Yet its impact upon American intellectual life remains incalculable. Louis Menand masterfully weaves pivotal late 19th-and early 20th-century events, colorful biographical anecdotes, and abstract ideas into a narrative whole that both enthralls and enlightens...

Has American higher education become a dinosaur? Why do professors all tend to think alike? What makes it so hard for colleges to decide which subjects should be required? Why do teachers and scholars find it so difficult to transcend the limits of their disciplines? Why, in short, are problems that should be easy for universities to solve so intractable? The answer, Louis Menand argues, is that the institutional structure and the educational philosophy of higher education have remained th...

"An engrossing and impossibly wide-ranging project . . . In The Free World, every seat is a good one." —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post**"The Free World sparkles. Fully original, beautifully written . . . One hopes Menand has a sequel in mind. The bar is set very high." —David Oshinsky, The New York Times Book Review | Editors' ChoiceOne of The New York Times's 100 best books of 2021 | One of The Washingto...

"Narrator David Colacci approaches this opinionated, engrossing audiobook with a practiced voice that lets its numerous stories tell themselves without fanfare...this audiobook is a monumental work." -- AudioFile MagazineIn his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize**–winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years.**The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It w...

The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea—an...

Do the Fed’s efforts to stabilize the economy worsen inequality?The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, was built for a monetary system composed primarily of investor-owned, government-chartered banks. But over the years, the erosion of banking law and the rise of alternative forms of money created outside of the banking system have pushed the Fed to take on more and more responsibilities to keep the economy out of recession, as it did during the 2008 crisis, a...

Confucian Ethics: The book delves into the ethical principles and moral teachings of Confucius, who emphasized the importance of moral virtue, righteousness, benevolence, and filial piety.Rectification of Names: One of the central concepts in Confucian ethics is the "rectification of names," which refers to the idea that if names (terms or titles) are not used correctly and accurately, society will fall into disorder. Dawson likely discusses this principle and its significance.The Golden R...

The Ethics of ConfuciusBy Miles Menander DawsonThis work contains the sayings of the Master and his disciples upon the conduct of "The Superior Man." The ethical and political precepts of Confucius are not well known in Occidental countries, even to most of those who give special attention to these subjects; and of what is known, much, indeed most, is confused with the notion that Confucius taught a religion in our sense of that term.About t...

“Erudite, wide-ranging, and slyly humorous.”—The AtlanticOne of the great novelists and public intellectuals of our time gives a master class on the philosophy of fiction.Umberto Eco was fond of pointing out that all writing is narrative. He published his famed debut novel The Name of the Rose when he was forty-eight years old, yet he believed that everything he had written to that point—from treati...

The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but an important statement about politics and society. Published in 1950, one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling’s essays examine the promise —and limits—of liberalism, challenging the complacency of a naïve liberal belief in rationality, progress, and the panaceas of economics and other social science...