Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World

At the age of 48, film critic David Denby returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, to re-experience the core humanities courses he had taken as a freshman 30 years before. Facing the question of what he really knows, Denby re-examines the besieged Western classics, ranging from Homer, Sappho, and Sophocles to Dante, Nietzsche, and Woolf. What relevance do the writers and thinkers of the past have to our current life? The answer surprised Denby and will surprise and enlighten his listeners. Great Books is a fascinating look at the crisis of literature in the late 20th century, mixing personal reflection, criticism, and the story of one man’s effort “to create a self.”