Louis Menand
Louis Menand is the Robert M. and Anne T. Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, and a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Metaphysical Club—which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman Prize in 2002—and of American Studies, a collection of essays.
From the Review
September 23, 2004: Edmund Wilson's Vanished World
January 17, 2002: Goblin Market
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring a film directed by Peter Jackson
October 18, 2001: College: The End of the Golden Age
April 26, 2001: The Socrates of Cambridge
The Evolutionary Philosophy of Chauncey Wright edited by Frank X. Ryan
May 25, 2000: Bloom's Gift
Ravelstein by Saul Bellow
March 9, 2000: A Fine Detachment
December 2, 1999: Opening Moves
August 12, 1999: Kubrick's Strange Love
Eyes Wide Shut a film by Stanley Kubrick
June 24, 1999: Billion-Dollar Baby
Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace a film by George Lucas
April 8, 1999: The Strange Case of William James: An Exchange
December 17, 1998: William James & the Case of the Epileptic Patient
Genuine Reality: A Life of William James by Linda Simon
William James Remembered edited by Linda Simon
The Thought and Character of William James by Ralph Barton Perry, with an introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried
Manhood at Harvard: William James and Others by Kim Townsend
The Correspondence of William James edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis, by Elizabeth M. Berkeley
Volume 4, 1856-1877
Volume 5, 1878-1884
Volume 6, 1885-1889
October 22, 1998: Beat the Devil
The Time of Our Time by Norman Mailer
September 24, 1998: Jerry Don't Surf
Saving Private Ryan a film directed by Steven Spielberg, screenplay by Robert Rodat
December 4, 1997: Not Getting the Lesson of the Master
Washington Square a film directed by Agnieszka Holland
The Wings of the Dove a film directed by Iain Softley
August 14, 1997: Inside the Billway
Locked in the Cabinet by Robert B. Reich
Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America by Elizabeth Drew
Trail Fever: Spin Doctors, Rented Strangers, Thumb Wrestlers, Toe Suckers, Grizzly Bears, and Other Creatures on the Road to the White House by Michael Lewis
June 26, 1997: Made in the USA
American Visions Time, Inc., in association with Thirteen/WNET, PBS by Robert Hughes. an eight-part television documentary produced by BBC Television and
American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America by Robert Hughes
June 12, 1997: Entropology
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
May 15, 1997: How Eliot Became Eliot
Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 by T.S. Eliot, edited by Christopher Ricks
The Waste Land, the 75th anniversary edition by T.S. Eliot, with an afterword by Christopher Ricks
February 20, 1997: Born Free
What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation by Charles Murray
February 6, 1997: It's a Wonderful Life
The People vs. Larry Flynt a film by Milos Forman
The People vs. Larry Flynt: The Shooting Script by Scott Alexander, by Larry Karaszewski. with an afterword by Milos Forman
An Unseemly Man: My Life as Pornographer, Pundit, and Social Outcast by Larry Flynt, with Kenneth Ross
January 9, 1997: Between Planes
Airframe by Michael Crichton
November 14, 1996: Dole's Three Strikes
October 17, 1996: Pound, Eliot, & Anti-Semitism (letter)
September 19, 1996: Hollywood's Trap
The Nutty Professor a film by Tom Shadyac
Independence Day a film by Roland Emmerich
Mission: Impossible a film by Brian De Palma
The Rock a film by Michael Bay
Twister a film by Jan De Bont
The Cable Guy a film by Ben Stiller
June 6, 1996: Eliot and the Jews
T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form by Anthony Julius
February 1, 1996: What Jane Austen Doesn't Tell Us
Sense and Sensibility a film directed by Ang Lee, screenplay by Emma Thompson
Persuasion a film directed by Roger Michell, screenplay by Nick Dear
Clueless a film directed by Amy Heckerling, screenplay by Amy Heckerling
Pride and Prejudice 1996 directed by Simon Langton, screenplay by Andrew Davies. produced by BBC Television Arts and Entertainment, January 14—16,
The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film by Emma Thompson
The Making of 'Pride and Prejudice' by Sue Birtwistle, by Susie Conklin
July 13, 1995: Journey into the Dark
The Tunnel by William H. Gass
April 20, 1995: Under Western Eyes
Our Game by John le Carré
March 23, 1995: Finding It at the Movies
For Keeps by Pauline Kael
November 17, 1994: Culture Wars (letter)
November 3, 1994: 'The Culture Wars': An Exchange
October 20, 1994: Conant & the FBI (letter)
October 6, 1994: The Culture Wars
Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America's Future by Richard Bernstein
July 14, 1994: The Quiet American
James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age by James G. Hershberg
May 12, 1994: Eliot Without Tears
George Eliot's 'Middlemarch' directed by Anthony Page. produced by BBC Television
December 2, 1993: An American Prodigy
Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life by Joseph Brent
June 25, 1992: The Real John Dewey
John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert B. Westbrook
November 21, 1991: The Politics of Deconstruction
Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man by David Lehman
April 11, 1991: Man of the People
The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics by Christopher Lasch
From New York Review Books
 | The Liberal Imagination The great critic's masterwork makes a case for the necessity of the imaginative works in a society ever more worshipful of the liberal ideals of rationality and progress. "Trilling...shows how criticism, written with grace, style, and a self-questioning cast of mind, can itself become a form of literature, as well as a valuable contribution to how we think about society.—Morris Dickstein |
 | Memoirs of Hecate County Written in a fine clear style that is not in the least dated, Memoirs of Hecate County deserves to stand among the finest accomplishments of twentieth-century American fiction. |
 | To the Finland Station Wilson combines his polymathic talents as critic, journalist, historian, and novelist, making this one of the greatest works by twentieth-century America's greatest man of letters. |
Books by Louis Menand
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2002)
American Studies (2002)
Pragmatism: A Reader (1997)
Discovering Modernism: T.S. Eliot and His Context (1987)