Book by Book (20 page)

S
TEFAN
Z
WEIG
(1881-1942). Viennese novelist, short-story writer (“The Royal Game”), and biographer.
The World of Yesterday
is a moving memoir. Committed suicide in despair at the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the rise of Nazism.

Above all, I want to thank librarians and booksellers everywhere: They have made
Book by Book
possible. As usual, Marian Peck Dirda and our three sons, Christopher, Michael, and Nathaniel, provided reality checks whenever I tended to drift off too long into bookish revery. McDaniel College, through the good graces of President Joan Coley, Provost Thomas Falkner, and Professor LeRoy Lad Panek (former chair of the English Department), provided me with a refuge in which to finish the initial drafts of my manuscript. Patricia and Allen Ahearn, owners of Quill and Brush Books, then allowed me to hole up in their back bedroom while I revised my text. At Writers Representatives, my agents, Glen Hardey and Lynn Chu, aided by their associates Catharine Sprinkel and Farah Peterson, first encouraged, then enthusiastically supported this project. Had I not had the good fortune to land a job at the
Washington Post Book World
, I would almost certainly have never been able to read so much or so widely during the past twenty-five and more years.

I would like to thank everyone at Henry Holt who helped make
Book by Book
a reality: in particular, John Sterling, Sadie Stein, Patrick Clark, Devin Coats, Rita Quintas, and Annsley Rosner. Raquel Jaramillo designed
a handsome antique look for the book, while Elvis Swift's chapter ornaments are as ingenious as they are delightful. Most of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my editor, Vanessa Mobley, who encouraged me to think hard about everything I wrote, brought to each of these pages her own keen intelligence and taste, and in every way helped make this a better book.

All these people deserve a good deal of the credit for whatever merit
Book by Book
may possess. I alone am responsible for its mistakes, lacunae, and oversights.

M
ICHAEL
D
IRDA
, a longtime columnist for the
Washington Post Book World
, received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He holds a Ph
.D.
in comparative literature from Cornell University and is the author of
Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments
, the memoir
An Open Book
, and
Bound to Please
, a collection of biographical and critical essays about great writers and their work.

$13.00
$14.00/Canada
L
ITERARY
C
RITICISM

“As warm and stimulating as a library
to which one returns again and again.”
—C
HICAGO
T
RIBUNE
(E
DITOR'S
C
HOICE
)

Once out of school, most people read for pleasure. But for some of us there is an equally important reason that we read: to learn how to live. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda shows how the \\ it, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word informs and enriches nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death. From essential works for children to the definitive “interior library” that every reader should have at his command, Dirda offers us an opinionated, personal, and idiosyncratic account of what—and how—to draw meaning from what we read.

“The true tests of a book like this are three, and Dirda passes them all with flying colors. They are, that some of your favorite books and authors are included . . . that when the last page is turned you immediately find that you've compiled a huge list of books that you must read immediately • • • and that you'd like to continue the conversation about books with the author”
—N
ANCY
P
EARL
,
T
HE
W
ASHINGTON
P
OST

M
ICHAEL
D
IRDA
, a longtime staff writer for
Tie Washington
Post Book World
, received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the author of the memoir
An Open Book
and of two collections of essays,
Readings
and
Bound to Please.