Alan Jacobs

Traces the life of the twentieth-century Christian literary master, drawing on themes from the Narnia series to offer insight into Lewis's experiences, from his works as a medieval scholar to his role as a beloved children's book author.

"W.H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise BREAKING BREAD WITH THE DEAD, distinguished professor and author Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the great writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present. Today we are battling too much information, a society changing at lightning speed, algorithms aimed at shaping our every move,...

When it was first published in 1947,The Age of Anxiety- W.H. Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length poem- immediately struck a powerful chord, capturing the imagination of the cultural moment that it diagnosed and named. Beginning as a conversation among four strangers in a barroom on New York's Third Avenue, Auden's analysis of Western culture during the Second World War won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a symphony by Leonard Bernstein...