Leslie

Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....

The great Russian novelist and historian here reveals his round-by-round personal account of what it was like to be a writer in a Communist regime. He tells of his ten-year war to outwit Russia's rulers and get his works published in his own country. During his lengthy stay in the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn spent considerable time writing in total secrecy. In the 60s he was released and found himself a fairly free man. Soon thereafter, Khrushchev denounced Stalin, hope emerged briefly, and the underground writer decided to surface. The result was the publication in Russia of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and with it, the first public exposure of the truth about the prison camps. From this point, as would be expected, the KGB pursued him and Solzhenitsyn here tells of his clever strategy to foil their attempts to re-arrest him.

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict, and as many European settlers were driven into exile. From the perspective of half a century, it looks less like the last colonial war than the first postmodern one.